Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

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.

Q & A: “What do I need in order to be happy?”

To read the previous Q & A’s about William and Terry, go to the “William & Terry” Category in the left bar.

We’ve been following the life drama between William and his wife, Terry, from the perspective of William, who is a client of mine.  The relationship had nosedived a number of months ago, when Terry went into a deep depression and started relating to William in an increasingly more controlling and infantile manner, becoming completely dependent on him and unable to function in life on her own.  This resulted in Terry (at the advice of her therapist) entering into a month-long residential program, which she just recently came back from.  From William’s perspective, the attributes in Terry that have always made the relationship difficult for him have taken over, leaving none of what attracted him to her in the first place.   He has been struggling with what his responsibilities are toward her and how to cope with this situation, which has brought up major emotional triggers in him, sometimes resulting in him losing his temper and being hateful toward her, and often resulting in him feeling deeply unhappy.  During this process William has been having weekly TimeLine sessions with me in which we have been clearing the limiting decisions* that have been brought up in him by this situation.

The implicit question from William has been: “How can I stand this situation?”

But the real question now emerging is: “What do I need in order to truly be happy?”

Jane: It’s impossible to tell how something is supposed to end up being.  It could have been (which is what you hoped for) that Terry is somehow going to get significantly better, and things will be alright, and life will go back to the way it was.  Or it could be you end up being so fed up with Terry, because life is so miserable living with her, that you end up leaving her.  But what’s actually happening is you are going through a major personal transformation, bringing yourself increasingly more into your enlightened self-interest*, which doesn’t match either of these obvious outcomes.  The form it’s currently taking is you realizing that you have been avoiding expanding your world beyond your immediate home life because of unhealed issues in you.  But in order to be happy you have to expand your world, so your life is not limited to your relationship with Terry. It is you limiting the scope of your life which is what has been causing you to feel trapped. So right now, you moving toward happiness doesn’t require you leaving Terry.  Following enlightened self-interest* is leading you down a path that we couldn’t have preconceive of.  This shows how irrelevant our preconceptions are about how things are supposed to end up looking.  The challenge is being willing to stand in the confusion and discomfort of the unknown until things become clear, rather than jumping into an immediate solution so you can stop dealing with it.

The solutions in life require staying in reality.  And in order to stay in reality you have to follow what your enlightened self-interest* is.  Limiting decisions* block you from accessing your enlightened self-interest*.  And so when you come up against a brick wall blocking your enlightened self-interest*, you heal the unhealed issue (i.e. clear the limiting decision*) in you, and then a way forward becomes clear.  And as we’ve seen, what is in your enlightened self-interest* generally doesn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be before the limiting decisions* were healed.  And so you then take the next step, and it’s adjusting and changing.  It’s allowing things to unfold as they do.  It’s really quite a marvelous process.

Limiting Decisions*:  Limiting Decisions*: Unconscious decisions made in early childhood, such as “I am stupid,” “I am bad,” “People can’t be trusted.”

Enlightened Self-interest*: That which truly benefits you and connects you with reality, as opposed to selfishness, which is an emotional defense system and separates you from other people and reality. To read more about enlightened self-interest, go to: http://blog.janecohencounseling.com/2010/03/the-importance-of-self-interest/

or

http://blog.janecohencounseling.com/2010/06/how-do-we-know-life-is-actually-for-us-and-not-just-random/ .

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.

Aaron: We used to have a sense that we were important.  Our labor was necessary.  You worked your way up in a company, and you had value to the company.  There was a set way to get acknowledged for your value, as you advanced in your position.  Now with everything being done through computers, with so many potential resources out in the world, it’s hard to get a sense you have importance in the workplace.  You’re pretty much interchangeable.  Young people today don’t have a sense of how they can advance themselves in the world.  They don’t have a sense that they have importance or value out in the world.  What’s your perspective on this?

Jane: The issue here is who or what is defining your experience of reality.  Is it being defined from outside yourself or from inside yourself?  In the old paradigm it was your boss, and the structure of the company, that was defining what your value was, according to how well you fit into what serves the interests of the company and/or the people who control it. You knew you were of value to them if you got a raise or a promotion, and you climbed up the corporate ladder.  But this definition of value is limited by the particular perspectives of the people who control it.  It is therefore defined by a human construct, which is not necessarily aligned with what is inherently true.  Human constructs can’t define your actual value.

This hopeless feeling you have been describing is highlighting that people are mistaken or dysfunctional about how they are defining their feeling of importance.  When it’s coming from outside of yourself, it is based on the limitations and fallibilities of human beings. There’s no stability there.

Just because the old ways of doing things are no longer working, doesn’t mean things are going backwards.  What it means is that a step forward in the human evolutionary process is now being required.  We’re moving from the outside world defining our experience for us, to a more direct connect with reality.

In the evolutionary process, it seems life allows things to work at a less evolved level, until it’s time for humanity to evolve further.  When that occurs more is required of people for their lives to work.  This means the less evolved way of doing things becomes increasingly less workable, because it’s out of alignment with reality.

It’s now time for a major evolutionary shift, and the shift is occurring.  For people who aren’t participating in the changes that are needed for the shift, it’s a harder process.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

Question from Jeffrey (written before recent events in Egypt)

Jeffrey: I’m wondering your perspective on increased human violence? …the Moscow airport, Tucson rampage, border fences, deranged individuals killing police.  Each successive day leads to another carnage event…then the next higher level of security. It’s never ending cat ‘n mouse. What might human society be unaware of that is resulting in such destructive behavior? Is there anything we can do to reverse or arrest this escalation effect?  Or maybe it’s all relative…bad apples just a part of civilization.

Jane: We are in a major transition period in terms of what it takes to create stability, well-being and survival.  In the past there were clearly spelled out ways of earning a living and moving ahead in your profession; there were spelled out ways of what it takes to be a good, moral person; there were clear roles you were supposed to take on to create a stable family — what a good husband, wife or child is; and so on.

But many of the definitions and structures holding these in place are falling apart or rapidly changing.  And this is on top of the more global challenges of financial instability, global warming, and so on.  What people leaned on for structuring their lives is serving them less and less well, and holding less and less meaning for them. People feel, in many ways, they no longer have a stable way to take care of their basic needs that they can count on.

These old structures and models and roles did give people stability, without people really having to be conscious or having to relate directly to life itself.  But the evolutionary process is one of moving toward greater and greater consciousness.  What works during one particular stage of evolution won’t necessarily work during another, as evolving forward is inherent in life.

And those who are invested in the old forms are having a hard time in this transition.  The more the investment is, the harder the transition.  And this can lead to varying degrees of social chaos and violence.

The solution is learning how to relate directly to life itself, rather than leaning on and being at the mercy of human constructs and definitions from those outside of you.  One way of putting this is it’s moving from leaning on some external, static, authoritative defining of how things should be — to something much more fluid and changeable, requiring much more personal responsibility.

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 a continued dialog with Jered about the Australian Founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who has been responsible for leaking sensitive secret government information out into the world.

Jered: My concern is the wisdom and consequences of these disclosures since there’s no way Assange read 250,000 sensitive documents.

Jane: What is the purpose of judging the wisdom and consequences of his disclosures?  I guess you’re wondering what the righteous thing to do is.  Should we allow government to keep certain things secret and who should be in control of that? Is that covering up things that should be known by the general population?  But if we don’t keep these things secret, is that causing even more harm?

Focusing on trying to control each other is a losing battle, and if we look out in the world that becomes pretty apparent.  We can’t control the terrorists, we can’t control which political party wins and the laws they end up passing or revoking.  Sometimes things go our way, and sometimes they don’t.  But that’s not the real playing field.  And the shift the world is undergoing right now is increasingly making that clearer.  We have been looking in the wrong direction for solutions. 

Whether Assange’s actions are wise or not is not the issue.  He did what he did, and apparently is going to continue doing it.  You could say he is in a dialog with the world, and the world is in dialog in response.  And how you relate to the dialog will be a learning experience for you.  The dialog itself is what opens up truth.  As I said in the previous post, the issue now is engaging rather than trying to control.  Engaging is where the resources, safety and well-being can be accessed, because it’s hooking into a larger truth, a larger framework beyond any individual person’s control.  It’s participating in life, rather than trying to control it.

As we approach the New Year we can see the transition we have been going through in these tumultuous times.  One way to describe it is we are shifting from striving to be in control, to engaging instead.  The business world is demonstrating this very graphically with social media revolutionizing the whole field.  Engaging requires letting go of our investment in having things take on the particular forms we are invested in, that we believe we are in control of.

Stock piling resources, and building empires, and creating “foolproof” strategies — only to have the stock market tumble, home values bottom out, and the financial world destabilize.  How many symbols of being in control have you lost this year?  Your house?  Your job?  Your retirement funds?  Your relationship?  Have you been trying to regain that control in order to lean on it again for your stability?  Or have you been allowing the loss of it to reshape you, to transform you, to shift how you are looking at and approaching life itself?

There is no safety or stability in being in control.  But that is not a lesson the world could learn as long as the old ways of doing things seemed to be working.  Really engaging is the opposite of control.  It is putting the truth out there to be seen.  It is a process of vulnerably being present with each other and life itself.  This is giving up the control to a larger truth and reality than human control, and finding out that this larger source is based in love.

The bottom line of what this transition requires is love.  It takes love to let go of trying to control our experience, and to engage in life instead.  It takes a recognition of the love that’s all around, which is the ultimate gift.

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.

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.

William: “My wife has gone off the deep end.  She’s become very anxious, and is not willing to do the things that would help her.  She has become completely reliant on me for everything, and needs constant reassurance.  She is upset if I do anything without her.  I am reaching the end of my rope.  What should I do?  I’m afraid she might harm herself if I don’t do whatever she wants me to do that she feels reassured by.  I only see two choices:  Either go along with her — or don’t and feel responsible for the state she gets into as a result, including that she might harm herself.”

Jane: “The bottom-line is if your life is appearing to not work, there are one or more limiting decisions you have that are distorting your experience of reality.  And when they are cleared, the way you are looking at things will shift and a way forward will become apparent.  The reason you see only those two choices is because the ground you are standing on is limited and structured by limiting decisions that filter in only the information that supports the limiting decisions, and not anything that doesn’t.”

When we discussed it further it turned out that how William was experiencing his wife was virtually identical with how he felt with his mother when he was a child.  His mother was very anxious about life and felt to him to be very unstable.  He felt responsible for her emotional state, and that what he did or didn’t do determined whether she felt OK or not. He thought he had married someone who was strong and the opposite of her, but now it turns out that underneath that apparent strength was someone who was actually very weak, and now he is right in the middle of the very thing he thought he had escaped.

After we cleared the limiting decision “he is responsible for the existence of the woman he’s dependent on,” William said he felt a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders.

He was standing on the new ground of realizing that he really didn’t have the power to determine his mother’s well-being and stability, no matter what he did or didn’t do; and so he was also now realizing that about his wife as well.  He realized that he doesn’t have the power to personally solve the problem for his wife, and that nothing he can do will make any difference about it, as the source of it is only in her; and that he’s been enabling her to not find a real solution. And therefore he is no longer feeling hostage to her, or that her life depends on what he does or doesn’t do.

And so, because of this, he realized that there were, in fact, other options than the unacceptable ones he had felt locked in by.  He can now relate compassionately to her, from standing on this new ground, making clear to her what he can and can’t do, and therefore no longer being co-dependent with her.  He had felt imprisoned by his wife’s dysfunction, but what he had really been imprisoned by was his own.

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

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.

Original Invitation for Dialog:

“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… “

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

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.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you,

Jane