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.
Below is a response from RL to my invitation for dialog about the direction humanity is going in and the challenge in front of us. Underneath that is my response to RL. If you can a response to these you can send it to me using this blog’s contact form.
_________
RL: “GM foods are a fantastic idea, initially, produce mass quantity of food to feed people more quality food… Of course there are people who want to monopolize on this instantly, such as Monsato, maximizing profits by contracting deals that cannot be withdrawn. This is done without being cautious to the effects, and giving time for science to perfect the process. Hydrogenated oil… when created at first, great idea! Food shall not spoil so quick… yet 30 years down the line we find its ill effects, but to completely ban it from use is impossible, as to the multi million dollar agreements of companies like crisco and mcdonalds. But 30 years down the line we find Hydrogenation of food is useful on sugar starches, to create an indigestible sugar that is great for diabetics, and does not cause insulin spikes. Every discovery has an application, we just need to find the correct one, and the key requirement is patience. Money is the root of all evil….”
Jane: “To me, what you are saying boils down to: Because of greed, some people take advantage of, and have huge power over, other people. This perspective is that we are victims of the greed of other people.
When we look at these kinds of issues, the focus is generally on those who take advantage of other people, as if they are the problem. This is not recognizing that those other people are just as powerful as those who “take advantage of them.” The problem isn’t those who take advantage of other people; it is what causes those other people to give their power away and let themselves be manipulated. And it is not others they are being manipulated by.
What people really desire are, for example, being powerful, valuable, successful, loved, safe and so on. And having those is the true nature of people. But people make limiting decisions* as children, which cause them to believe that can’t have those things, in whatever area it is that they make limiting decisions* in. Because this feels deeply unacceptable to them, they develop emotional defense systems that cushion them against, or compensate for, not being able to access those. People then get invested in symbolic substitutes for these that they feel they can control — such as buying expensive things they don’t need; drinking excessive alcohol; and eating unhealthy comfort foods that give them a false, but immediate, sense of well-being. These kinds of symbolic substitutes give them the feeling that they are powerful, valuable, successful, lovable, safe and so on. People tend to buy into symbols of what gives them a sense of well-being.
When we go toward symbolic substitutes, we are believing that the source of our well-being is outside of ourselves. This is what addictions are all about. They are something physical that we believe we have control over that will give us a sense of having something we truly desire, but feel unable to access, such as love, emotional nourishment, power, success, significance and so on. But in reality, an addiction is something that becomes out of our control, and ends up having control over us.
And so these symbolic symbols ultimately have harmful effects on us, as well as often on other people and our common environment. This is because they not in alignment with reality. They result in excessive consumption of resources and pollution in one form or another. And they bring us into an increasingly deeper sense of hopelessness, because we’re looking in the wrong direction for solutions. They cause us to rely on those who provide these symbolic substitutes believing they are the source of our well-being. Those we believe have huge power over us, such as Monsato in your example, only have that power because we are giving it to them, believing them to be the source of what we need, as if that source could come from something outside of ourselves.”
Limiting Decisions*: Unconscious decisions, usually made before the age of 6 or 7. They are always some form of life doesn’t work and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you, such as: “I am bad, not valuable, a failure…” “People can’t be trusted.” And so on.
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.
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.”
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“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.”
Spirituality defines experience that is from a larger perspective than the limited human perspective. It defines a more fundamental, permanent, objective, stable and true experience of reality that runs through all of human experience. We are all connected to it, although we may not define it as spirituality. And most people take it for granted.
It is what exists outside of human constructs, and is an underlying infrastructure that is always there. It is an underlying reality that is at the core of our experience, that is supporting it, that is supporting all that is true and real in us, the essence of who we are, and what really matters to us. It is at the heart of the universe. Truth is connected to it. So is principle. So is love. So is intelligence. So is life. Anything that is real is connected to it. Without it, we are just pieces of clay.
Everything that is created comes from it, and therefore is a part of it, and contains its vibrations, as well as the vibrations of its own intentions. This inherent structure or reality is always present. It is an inherent reality that is not affected by the cycles of life or death or any event that might happen. But it does interact with its changeable creations, which are expanded and evolved by its presence. Everything that is real is imbued with its presence.
The human experience is very changeable, unstable, subjective, effectible and limited. The human journey moves from lacking clarity to clarity, from limitations to expanded consciousness. It moves from being disconnected from the essence of who we are to being connected to our divinity.
The real world of truth and reality is connected to something larger than human experience, and cannot be changed by human will. Just as principle and truth cannot be changed by human will, or we wouldn’t experience them as being principle and truth. And so they are plumb lines we can orient our experience around.
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.
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.
From the Life is Meant to Work Prepare yourself for a New Reality
teleseminar
A pivotal question at the bottom of how civilization has organized itself is “Is humanity inherently good, or is it bad, or is it simply weak and corruptible?” The bottom line way we define the answer to that has to do with what we believe people would do if they weren’t controlled. And that has to do with the issue of self-interest. If people are not controlled, or if they don’t control themselves, they will go toward their own self-interest. And so the issue then becomes how we perceive what self-interest is.
The idea that self-interest is bad, is based on the idea of original sin. In other words it is based on the idea that if people pursue what they desire, what really matters to them, including human desires, they will break Divine laws and will cause harm to others. But the problem here is not inherent in the nature of self-interest, but in how we conceive of what self-interest is.
When many religious perspectives or spiritual philosophies define human self-interest, they are actually defining human emotional defense systems, which get built up as a result of having made limiting decisions. And when they are advocating letting go of desires, this is also the framework they are referring to. People’s emotional defense systems result in them going toward substitutes for what they desire rather than the real thing. And these substitutes are generally harmful to oneself and others.
But humanity doesn’t live solely in their emotional defense systems, and we are in an evolutionary process through them. Desiring these symbolic substitutes is not the nature of humanity or human desire. People going toward these kinds of desires (that can often be addictive, and that we associate with shallowness, perversion or lacking in self-discipline) does not have to do with the inherent corruptibility or weakness of human beings, or the nature of human desires. Self-interest is inherent in any living creature. It’s not the self-interest that is the problem, it is the substitutes for it that are the problem. And the substitutes are created because of the denial of the real thing. The way to enlightenment is not a denial of our self-interest, or of our human experience, it is the recognition and embracing of the truth of what it is. It is coming into experience, not avoiding it — which means the difference between realizing that the nature of reality is positive, that if we come into what is true, it leads us to the highest good of all concerned.
On the one hand most of humanity doesn’t have any concept of the depth of the distortion of our perception of reality, and how much we are living and forming our perception of reality from an upside-down and insane perspective. But on the other hand, there is little concept of the inherent goodness of the human soul, that what the truth is about who we inherently are is total goodness, not in spite of our self-interest, but because of it. This is because what we really desire leads us to love, truth, connection, meaning, everything true and real. What it is human beings truly desire is a part of the truth of the universe. It is beyond any false persona or egoic self. It is what can bring us out of the perception of the limited physical world we were born into, in which we forgot who we are beyond the physical experience.
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.
