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.
(Previous dialogs with William are under the “William & Terry” category.)
As has been described previously, William’s wife went off the deep end emotionally several months ago, and has been relating extremely irrationally toward him. Her therapist hasn’t been able to make any progress with her and she is currently in a residential program.
During this time William (an NLP TimeLine client of mine) has been working through the limiting decisions* in himself that have been triggered by his wife’s behavior toward him. His pattern had been to at first endure it, and do things and respond in ways he really didn’t want to, in order to placate her. Eventually when he got to his limit, he would end up exploding at her. He can now respond honestly to her without being in defensive mode — with compassion, but fully being truthful and staying in touch with what matters to him.
In working through his issues, it has become clear that this experience has been just as much for and about him as it has been about her. He has also realized that he has not been in reality about what a relationship actually is about. And so William asked me how I would describe what a real relationship would be like.
Jane: It has to do with finding love through coming into what is actually true.
Relationships are about relating. And any form of real relating is participating in the human evolutionary process. That is because when you do that, you are tapping into something you don’t control — something beyond where you have previously been.
In the ideal relationship, people reveal the truth of how they are responding to each other, which means not coming from a defended place. We don’t control how we respond. How we respond is just a fact. We are so busy trying to control the results of our effects on each other, we never find out what the truth is between us, and how what is really true turns out to be what we really want of each other.
When you get to the bottom of what is true between people, it always is love. That is what is underneath the separation, the fear, the anger, and the pain. But most people are so daunted by the dragon at the gateway to coming together with the other, they never find that out.
When we are truly relating to each other, allowing things to be what they are and reveal them without trying to control, manipulate and distort them according to what we think will work — we find that life really does work and we find love. But relating to each other is also likely to bring to the surface every limiting decision* you have that is in the way of love. And so it can move you very rapidly along your own transformational, evolutionary path.
* Limiting Decision: An unconscious decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
As you may recall the last “Ask Jane” was a continuation of a dialog with William whose wife of nearly 30 years had become so emotionally out of touch with reality, it became impossible for him to live with her. And the comfort and stability he had built up in his life with her for all of these years had been pretty much shattered. The point of my answer to him had to do with the only thing that really happened is he learned that he was looking in the wrong direction for his source of well-being and stability.
In response to that “Ask Jane,” I received this request from a reader: “Will you please expound next on what actually gives us stability?”
The answer to this is a large subject, beyond the scope of this newsletter, and goes to the heart of what the “Life is Meant to Work” Thought System Course I teach is about. So, for this article, I’ll just touch on a piece of it:
The source of the deep feeling of instability for William was he had had more faith in his ability to control the outcomes in his life to result in his benefit, than he had in the inherent nature of how life works. Real stability has to do with coming into alignment with what is actually true, with what is real, the inherent principles and foundations of Life, Truth, Love, Consciousness, Intelligence — present-moment reality; and allowing it to transform your experience — and you — in the process. It requires letting go of human control.
People generally don’t consciously relate to Life itself (or an overall Intelligence or Consciousness, or a Divine Presence….), which is not in human control — unless perhaps when they’re in some sort of crisis that they see no solution to that they believe they can control. This is based on the deeply ingrained, underlying belief that life doesn’t work — or that it’s just arbitrary, and not something that can be counted on.
And it is based on the idea that what is actually real is the physical world, and can be controlled by human beings. It’s just a question of: Who is controlling whom? Who is the source of well-being for whom? Who is defining reality for whom? We either control them or they control us.
William had been trying to control the outcome of what is actually true in his life with his wife. And he was assuming that this huge change that has been happening in their lives would end up being harmful for both of them, rather than trusting that if he followed what is actually true, the shifting and changing that would result from it would move both of them forward in their personal growth and life’s path.
Another way to put it is we generally believe truth is against us. People often compromise themselves in relationships rather than revealing what is really true from their perspective, because they don’t believe it could possibly work out if everyone did that. It means they don’t put themselves in a transformational — which is another way of saying “evolutionary” — process where the whole picture could shift and change in a way that they don’t control, and can’t foresee the outcome of.
From the human perspective, putting oneself in that position is counter-intuitive. That is because it is switching survival systems. It is relying on a whole different system for your safety, stability and well-being. In order to be willing to do that it is crucial to really get that — when your experience of reality is not distorted by limiting decisions* — life inherently does work. It is switching from what I call the “substitute world” to the “real world,” which is one way to describe what the shift in consciousness is that the world is in the midst of now.
* Limiting Decision: An unconscious decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Jill: I’m glad I’m not young during these times, and have the wisdom of my years. It must be much harder for young people to cope with the world today.
Jane: If we were born into the world now, the way we were many years ago when we were actually born — we would be much less equipped to deal with life today than the new generations are. It’s a different experience for the younger generation. They’re set up differently inside than we are, because each generation generally comes into their lifetime more evolved than the previous ones.
They are generally coming in with much more consciousness and more of a sense of who they are. And they are more able to define their experience from their own direct experience, as opposed to relying on external authority.
And they are born into a different world experience than we were born into — with different energy, and a whole different level of knowledge and consciousness than the way the world was when we were born. Generally speaking, people are in vibrational resonance with the world as it is when they are born, which is what astrology is about.
The internal dilemmas the younger generations are encountering are on a much more evolved level, and are more in tune with present-moment experience, than that of many of their parents. Therefore, their parents are totally at sea with what they are dealing with. The old paradigm is you use discipline to act the way you are suppose to act, regardless of how you feel about it. There is a particular standard of behavior you are supposed to meet to be considered good and upright and successful. Many parents can’t understand why their children can’t just force themselves to conform to it. That is what is considered good character. And it used to be acceptable to beat children into submission. To a large degree the older generations, when they were children, didn’t have enough sense of who they were to reject that perspective. But the newer ones can no longer accept that. They are here to solve the actual dilemmas, not to superficially solve it by controlling their external behavior.
The old standards of behavior are human constructs that were a way of creating order for the less evolved stages of human development, because we weren’t connected enough to the truth of present-moment experience to relate directly to life. And that was in addition to the old paradigm perspective of original sin, which results in the idea that being moral requires being other than who we really are. But the newer generations can’t as easily override who they really are, and can’t bend themselves to conform to some made up construct, which they are becoming increasingly more aware hasn’t been working.
Instead they have more of an ability to tap into present-moment truth about themselves and the world around them, which is what I call the “real world.” And the more people tap into the real world of direct knowledge and experience, the faster the evolutionary process occurs. It is a process of bringing us out of the distortions and illusions caused by the collective human history of limiting decisions and emotional defense systems — which is the source of the huge messes humanity is facing — and into the real world where life actually does work wonderfully well.
The young people of today are in a transition between those two worlds. Actually we all are, but to a large extent the younger generations are further along in the transition. Mentally and physiologically, probably on a cellular level, they are more in alignment with the transition that is occurring. But they also don’t yet have much experience in life to draw on, and are not yet physically, emotionally and mentally fully developed. They are in the difficult position of knowing the adults don’t have the answers, but they don’t yet have enough experience to be able to structure themselves.
They are more hard-wired to look for or relate to a larger or more expanded source beyond their parents, but yet they feel cheated out of being able to lean on their parents for answers, because that feels like not having parents. This then puts pressure on the older generations to expand out of their locked-in perceptions of reality that feel safe to them. The shift humanity is going through now means that there no longer is safety in sticking to the old tried and true ways of doing things and thinking about things. Safety no longer lies in maintaining control.
Life is Meant to Work
Prepare Yourself for a New Reality
Tele-Seminar
Underneath everything in human experience — the pain, the tragedy, the heartache, the perceived unfairness — the bottom line always turns out to reveal love.
This is because the only thing that really exists between people, underneath their emotional defense systems, is love. Our defense systems are a way to shield us from the pain of believing we don’t have it. Think about the last time you got angry at someone. Perhaps you felt they were inconsiderate of you, or were disrespectful of you, or took something that mattered to you away from you. If you really knew, in that moment, that you are fully loved and cared about, wouldn’t that change that angry feeling? And if, because of knowing that you are fully loved and cared for, you began relating to your friend or significant other out of love and compassion, instead of anger, do you think that would change either their behavior toward you, or your perception of their behavior?
Underneath pain is love. When you are grieving because someone you love has died, what is underneath the grieving is love for them. When people rose up as a community after 9-11 occurred, what they were feeling was love for all of the people who died. The strange thing about that is why does it take a catastrophe for us to feel love for each other? Often we don’t really acknowledge how much we love someone until they are seriously ill and/or die. Why is that?
The feeling of love is very intense, when we really acknowledge the fullness of how we feel. Being able to feel the intensity of how much we actually love is an evolving process, as it seems to be too much for us to feel its full impact in our present vibrational state. It is generally in direct opposition to aspects of our defended self. In fact, it can split it open. The full intensity of our love can feel like an expansion of the self that goes further out than we have the ability to stretch. And so mostly we divert that feeling into our defenses, rather than admit what it really is.
It can also feel like a breaking open, when the vulnerable emotions break through the defenses, dissolving us into tears. You could say that is the meaning of a broken heart. The heart breaks open, so that the emotions that have been trapped by the rigidity of the defenses can rush out. When a loved one dies, we cry for the pain and loss, rather than embrace the intense love we feel for them, right now, even with their passing. The depth and intensity of our feelings are often more easily diverted to hate or pain than to opening ourselves up to the intense vulnerability of love, which cuts through all of our defenses, false personas and worlds.
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.
The term false or substitute persona is what I use instead of what is normally thought of as the Ego, and comes from a different perspective. The ego is generally thought of as an aspect of human beings, inherent in who we are. People are thought of as having a strong or weak ego, which describes how strong their sense of self is, their sense of importance or self-worth. A person who is described as egotistic is thought to be arrogant or self-centered, in other words, too involved with their self.
The false persona, on the other hand, is the sense of self that is created and built upon in the process of making limiting decisions*. It is simply a construct, and is not who the person really is. However, people generally believe it to be who they really are, and generally experience this process of building up the false self as building strength or effectiveness for functioning in reality, out in the world.
When limiting decisions* are made, we start making distinctions we never had before we made the limiting decisions*. For instance, if you made the limiting decision* you are powerless, then the issue of feeling powerless or powerful becomes something you focus on. The issue of whether you do or don’t feel powerful was never something you thought about before you made the decision. You were just simply in your power. Or if you made the limiting decision* that you were not valuable, your value then becomes an issue of focus.
Before you made the limiting decision*, your focus was, instead, on relating directly to life, propelled and motivated by your enlightened self-interest. You were functioning from your empowerment, not focusing on it. When you are focusing on the issue of whether you are powerful or not, feeling empowered then becomes the point of your life, rather than life itself. You have now created a buffer between you and your direct experience. You are focused on building your false persona, for the purpose of compensating for not feeling powerful.
At the same time, this process of diverting our attention to the areas of our limiting decisions* has an important purpose in our evolution, because, on the soul level, we make limiting decisions* in the areas of particular interest to us. And so, in the case of having made a decision we are powerless, it immerses us in the experience of feeling powerless, focusing on the issue of power, getting into power-struggles, and so on. And so while it seems to be a divergence from actually living life, it is an exploration into an area of great interest to you as a soul, which you never would have explored and gained so much experience about if you hadn’t made the limiting decision*. And so making the limiting decision* and developing the false persona are important parts of our evolutionary path. But the false persona is not who we inherently are.
From my perspective, the concept of the ego as representing an aspect of who we are, is an outdated concept. It is connected with the idea that our physical body and personality are who we are, and that, as such, it needs to be bolstered and supported. I believe this to be the wrong focus. It distracts us from actually participating and engaging in life. Our physical body is, instead, a vehicle for the expression of who we are, not who we actually are. Our body, and the substitute persona we develop as a part of the limited human experience on earth, are ways of interacting on earth and engaging in our evolutionary process of moving from the physical to the divine, and integrating the two.
The soul essence is who we really are, and the more in touch with it we are, the more effectively it is able to use the physical vehicle to express itself. The focus of what is real isn’t on the vehicle, but on the expression that is coming through it. And that expression affects the vehicle — how it looks, how it feels, its impact on others, and its fundamental well-being. The focus of that expression is on whatever is its enlightened self-interest in the process of engaging in life.
*Limiting decision: A decision made in early childhood that is some form of deciding that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.
To listen to the Preview audio for the next “Life is Meant to Work” Tele-seminar, click here.
For the info page with all of the details about the upcoming “Life is Meant to Work” Tele-seminar, click here.
From the “Life is Meant to Work” Teleseminar Course
Life is a living dialog that we are constantly engaged in. Our whole organism is a very fine-tuned, living instrument that has many means for taking in information, and is highly responsive. When we are affected we have a response. And this begins a dialog. Your response is some form of communication, which reveals something about you. And your response then affects the world around you, which then responds to you, revealing something about it, as well as how you affected it, which then reveals more about you. In this process you come in contact with increasingly more about who you are in your own evolving process. It’s like an opening up, like a flower. You may discover aspects of yourself that you don’t like or that need healing, and you may discover more of who you really are, in your magnificence.
The human dynamic of dialog is a major way the human evolutionary process works. We inherently have the potential to evolve, and to evolve quickly, because we so easily get affected and respond. But the human organism is not set up to evolve as quickly as this potential. It has its own timing. The human evolutionary process has been a process of starting with very dense, limited, contracted physical material, and expanding on many different levels to light-filled, clear, expanded consciousness — basically a coming into our own divine presence. In other words, we, as human organisms, are going through an expanding process, that keeps stretching us beyond where we currently are. It is stretching us on a physical, cellular level; on a mental level; on an energetic, vibrational level; on an emotional level; and probably on many more levels than I can think of.
In any area in which they have limiting decisions*, people usually find ways to avoid present moment interaction, and are therefore slowing down their evolutionary process. Among these mechanisms are avoiding truthful, live interactions with each other, through using social codes of behavior, such as what is considered to be polite, how people are expected to act in interactions with each other. For instance we routinely notice things about each other that we don’t talk about, because it would reveal personal truths that there is an unspoken agreement not to talk about.
Another example is the social expectation that if you relate certain ways to people, you can expect certain kinds of responses in return, which puts things in a kind of formula that people can hide behind. For instance, if you start talking to someone about some subject, they would probably feel obliged to listen to you, even if they are finding it not interesting. And that then would allow you to not have to deal with whatever the issue in you is that causes people not to want to listen to you.
There used to be a lot more social rules that people followed than there are today. People are now more routinely relating more honestly with each other. And this allows the evolutionary process to move more quickly.
*Limiting decision: A decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.
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.”
(Participants’ names are changed to protect their privacy.)
(To Chas) “The way it works is after you made the limiting decision that who you are is unacceptable, you then built up a false persona that is what you considered to be acceptable to the people you wanted to be acceptable to. These will be people similar to the original significant people in your life you made the liming decision in relation to. Those are then the kind of people who you will attract. You will attract people who are attracted to the false persona, not who you really are. And then if you try to relate to those people with your real self, they’re probably not going to have a positive response to you, because they fit a whole scenario in which the real you is not acceptable, so that’s how they’re going to respond to you. You’re selecting people who will respond positively, perhaps, to the substitute persona that you set up, depending upon what the structure is that the limiting decision is formed around. So as you start changing, and becoming more of who you are, you are very likely to find that the people you attracted with the false persona don’t fit you any more. But you’re also more likely to be open to people who actually like you. I think everybody in this group really likes you.”
… “It’s similar to what I have said to Janet many times before, because both of you are very emotionally vulnerable. Your real strength probably has to do with you coming into your vulnerable emotions and accepting them, stepping into them. And this is a foundation from which to build whatever you want to build, whether it’s your law practice, or your relationships with you family, or whatever it is. It’s where your gifts and strengths are. You probably don’t realize the power of your vulnerable emotions.
(To Janet) To you, if it comes from male logic, you think that’s the only way you’ll have the right to make waves, or the only way you’ll be taken seriously. Then you have the right to have an influence in the world. But that’s not the way you’re going to make waves. You are going to make waves with the power of your emotions, because that’s where your strength is. Emotions are very powerful, and you may be afraid of that. And it will have an influence, and you may be afraid of that. What you just said is you’ll be held to a higher level of conduct, and I think that’s what you could be afraid of. You have said before that once you start getting into your passion, what it is that you want, you’re afraid you going to be like a dictator, and make things all the way you want. And this perhaps relates in some indirect way, to a higher standard of conduct. There’s some misconception that’s in the mix of this, that’s confusing the matter for you.
What is also the mix, which it might also be important to you, Chas, is enlightened self-interest. It’s a very important concept. When we’re talking about power and we’re talking about what matters to you. When we’re taking about your passion, and about really getting out there in your power — then the issue of self-interest comes into the picture. It’s important to understand the distinction between self-interest as a defense system, which is what selfishness is — and enlightened self-interest, which is what really matters to you, and which is in alignment with life, the universe. If it really matters to you, then that is the truth. It either matters to you, or it doesn’t matter to you. That’s just a fact. So that makes it a part of larger truth. If you make the limiting decision that you can’t have what matters to you, whether it’s love, or acceptance, or being valuable, that’s where things get confused. Generally before you make the limiting decision having these things are not an issue. You just go toward what makes you happy, what matters to you. But after you make the limiting decision, for instance, that you’re not valuable, then being valuable becomes an issue. Since you then don’t think you’re valuable, then you do symbolic things that make you feel you are valuable, such as buy an expensive house or car, whether or not you can really afford it. So people go for these symbolic things. But these symbolic things are not what really matters to you. People think, ‘Oh I want this, I want that, I want that, and that’s self-interest.’ But that’s not what enlightened self-interest is. Enlightened self-interest is the real thing, not the symbol. If you’re going for the real thing, then it can only have a positive influence on everyone and every thing, because it’s in Divine order. It is truth. It is the way things really are. But when you’re going for something that is a symbolic substitute, and not what you really want, then it comes from a blocked and distorted perspective, and that puts you out of alignment with truth. And then somewhere down the line, it’s going to not turn out well, because it’s not in alignment with truth.”
(Participants’ names are changed to protect their privacy.)
(Fiona was saying she plans to get Botox injected in her face tomorrow so people can’t see what she’s feeling so easily.)
“There is something very magical about you.And unless you completely make your face catatonic, you can’t hide the truly uniqueness of who you are, and you wouldn’t really want to if you were in your right mind.I can understand why it would be a challenge for you being you, because you are truly unique.You are really an amazing, magical person.You have difficulty hiding it because it is so noticeable in you, and that is an amazing gift.And who knows the directions your life’s work may take in alignment with that gift of who you are.You are not meant to look like other people, thank God.There is something very amazing and special about you.You are so present in some way, so vulnerably true to who you are.Don’t hide that.That is an amazing gift.There are limiting decisions there, and that’s the only reason why you’re trying to hide yourself.There is no reality reason to do it.So we’ll just clear them in your TimeLine sessions.But don’t do anything to yourself in the meanwhile.”
(Participants’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.)
To Anita:… “I think you often think when you blurt something it’s a mistake, whereas what you’re really doing is revealing something about yourself, which you probably try not to do.Sometimes you are trying to reveal something about yourself, but other times you are trying to cover your tracks, as if you haven’t done it the right way.This thing you have about doing it right is a big issue for you, and it’s a big misunderstanding of what this process is.It’s come up before.It has to do with you thinking that who you are is not OK. But whatever you do is fine, because the transformational process is about revealing deeper levels of where you are at. What really makes this group work at a top level is when people are revealing on deeper and deeper levels what’s really going on inside of themselves.It’s not about being appropriate, because being appropriate isn’t revealing where you really are.If you wait until you can do it ‘right,’ then nothing real happens, and there’s is no possibility for transformation.
This is similar to the process we’ve been having with Janet, who has this idea about a persona that will make other people respect her, and not get too close to where she’s really at, so she doesn’t have to engage too much about where she really is because her real self may show. And then people may have judgments about it.But what keeps coming up for Janet is when she’s out there with that real her, that she can’t hide, that real self is full of life.That real self contains the nugget of the gold that is her. And you can see “the essence of Janet,” and we feel deprived when we don’t get it.And when we get, instead, her very clipped, logical, factual information-tank persona, we feel deprived of her, because the real her, that she’s been trying to skirt around, is amazing.”
(Anita said something about an interaction she had had, and Janet asked her a question about it.Anita rebuffed it.)
(To Anita) “My take on this is that what Janet said to you was an invitation to you to go deeper, to what was underneath that initial interaction. But your first response when people approach you is someone is criticizing and judging you.You think, “OK she’s judging me.We’re done.”And the group isn’t about that.It’s about transformation.It’s about going deeper. And if someone does get offended, then we go deeper into that because there is something underneath that.What’s underneath the defense systems, and the judgments, and the criticisms, and whatever happens to come up — it is all glorious because it is all living material.And underneath it is always something positive.But you don’t yet know that.”
…
“Renee is saying that she feels very triggered by something you said, fully knowing that she is not leaving. She is saying it, but she is still engaged.And there really is no danger in reality.The only danger is if you jump off of the merry-go-round, which is live interaction.But if you stick in there and you stay communicating and interacting and you go deeper, then you get beyond the defense system, which is not about reality.Then you can find out the positive truth underneath the surface of what’s going on.But if you disconnect yourself because of your fears, then you end up being stuck wherever you’re stuck.You don’t go deeper into getting to the positive territory.So the issue is really understanding that there is a bottommost positive truth.When you explore things underneath the defense systems, that’s what you find. Most people do not believe that.That’s the problem.Most people don’t believe that life is meant to work.They don’t believe that what’s really true between people, underneath their defense systems, is love.But the fact that this is true makes it safe to go deeper and deeper, because that’s what you’ll end up finding. And in the more than 13 years of doing this work, I’ve always found that to be true.
What I’m seeing right now is that you won’t let anyone love you.You won’t let anybody near to where you really are at, so that they can find out who you are and love you.That’s the result of this defense system.As soon as anyone shows any interest in seeing who you really are, where you’re really at — anytime someone shows curiosity or interest toward you, which would then allow them the chance to know you, and then to love you — you take it as a negative thing and push them away.”
(Anita said she doesn’t know where Janet is coming from.)
“It’s true you don’t know where she is coming from.You don’t know where any person who is being truthful is going to be coming from.And where they’re going to be coming from may trigger you.So the issue of safety is not about real safety, it’s about whether you get triggered or not.That’s what you’re concerned about, and the trigger for you is that you’re not safe.But it has nothing to do with actual safety. It has to do with your fears being brought up.What you’re afraid of has to do with you being seen where you are at. And there is a limiting decision there, and if you would allow yourself to be seen, eventually you would get to a place where you will discover that the truth about you is not what you are afraid that it is.People do accept the real you and they are not going to crucify it.But it takes some going into this deeper place and allowing the process to happen, so that you, for one second, stop defending the real you so you can find out that people love you.”
(Janet asked how does her blocking the real connection between her and other people relate to her needing to be liked.)
“If you were really allowing a connection to occur, you probably wouldn’t need to have that symbolism of people liking you.That’s what you do instead, because when you do that it’s a substitute for a real connection.I think this thing that came up between you and Renee is extremely important for you.And you keep on blocking out what the actual issue is. The actual issue means the difference between whether you actually will connect with someone or you won’t.And that’s where the bottom line is, that’s where the defense system is.That’s where you’re blocking the connection, right at that point.And that’s what I saw happening between you and Renee. This was very symbolic for you. Right at this point of you having forgotten something, and emotionally you couldn’t be present with Renee to admit that you forgot, and just stand in that and apologize.If you had said, ‘I’m really sorry.I forgot.I feel really terrible,’ that would have been connecting with her, being affected on a heart level.But you just skipped out and made an excuse — and you were gone.And it was hard and impersonal, and it was breaking the connection. So there’s a potential for a real heart connection there that you were breaking off because you weren’t appearing perfect.But the being imperfect — as people are — and revealing it, and relating in relation to that, actually builds deeper connection.If you mixed it up and allowed your emotions to come out and admitted that you messed up and that you felt bad, then you’d be emotionally available and there would be actual contact.And that would be much better, ultimately, than if you had remembered, and everything had gone smoothly, in the first place.
We’re talking about the mechanism that keeps people separated from each other, keeps real emotional bonds from happen.Now we’re down to the nitty gritty.That’s what people want — to be able to really connect with other people.And that’s the major human defense system — to keep oneself separated.That is just it.That’s where it is at. Are you going to be able to really heart-connect, really be together with other people?Or can’t you — or won’t you?”
