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EXTRA
Dr. Gabriella Kortsch
Tending Your
Inner Garden
Gabriella Kortsch, Tending Your Inner Garden
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Dr. Kortsch holds a doctorate in psychology and dedicates herself to integral coaching, clinical hypnotherapy, relationship
coaching, and energy techniques. She is an author and professional speaker and broadcasts a live weekly radio show in
English that is available on the Internet or for listening on her website, and has appeared in numerous television programs in
English and Spanish. She can help you move towards greater personal and relationship success with her integral approach to
life and offers training and workshops in the field of self-development and choosing responsibility for the self. Visit Advanced
Personal Therapy.com and sign up for her cutting-edge newsletter in English or Spanish, or visit her blog for more timely
articles.
From Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D.

CONTENTS:
Tending Your Inner Garden
Controlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the People in Them
Giving Birth to Yourself
Cellular Responsibility: Getting Your Power Back
Entering the Now Moment by Leaving Unawareness Behind
Do You Dance?
Where Are You Now?
Feeling Compassion: Only for the Hungry, or Also for People Who Hurt You?
Do You Vibrate to a Tune that Serves You Well?
What Are Your Addictions?
Do You Like the Person You Are Alone With?
Claiming Responsibility for the Self
Looking in all the Right Places

Advanced Personal Therapy. The Website of Dr Gabriella Kortsch,

Tending Your Inner Garden
Clients have often told me that they fear being by themselves. That they
fear their own company. That they will do anything to avoid an evening on
their own. Other clients tell me that while they may not fear being alone,
they find it a most boring proposition, and can’t quite imagine how to fill
the time, other than with TV or a novel. Others refer to being
uncomfortable in their own company, and hence, avoid it. (See also my
February 2006 Newsletter: Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For
Our Lives).
All three alternatives lead us to the same conclusion: if this is how you
feel about being alone with yourself, somehow you are not connected to
yourself – and - more importantly, you have no real relationship with
yourself, and therefore, probably don’t know yourself.
Why is this important?
Marrying Someone You Fear
Imagine marrying someone whom you fear being alone with, someone
whom you avoid spending an evening with on your own. Imagine
marrying someone you find so boring, that you would not want to spend
time alone with them. Or imagine marrying someone in whose company
you feel uncomfortable, and therefore, you avoid this person.
Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? You’d run ten miles before marrying
such a person. You’d do anything not to have to spend time with such a
person. Nevertheless, that’s the situation we have with ourselves when
we don’t recognize the value and importance of establishing a
relationship with ourselves that makes us enjoy our own company, find
ourselves interesting companions about whom we can always learn
something new, and who can always lead us to deeper and deeper levels
of understanding, and who is fun and exciting to be with…on our own.
Conjunctio…Are You Interested in Yourself?
Really? Is such a relationship with the self really possible? It basically
comes down to what Jung termed the conjunctio, in other words the
meeting of two separate parts of the self (generally unconscious) in the
process of becoming a whole, or of uniting, and in so doing, of
transforming.
But that actually sounds like a lot of psycho-babble. Who can
contemplate overcoming what sounds like such a difficult hurdle?
Anyway, who has the time and money to go into therapy in order to learn
about all these things, and explore the deep dark past of one’s
childhood? In actual fact, it is not so hard, and it certainly doesn’t depend
on whether or not you go into therapy. It has a lot to do with becoming
conscious and aware of the self, with a desire for knowledge of the self,
and with the acceptance of responsibility for the self. So basically it has a
lot to do with how interested you are in yourself.
Individuation and Becoming What You Can Truly Be
Jung, who brought us the idea of the integral, or holistic human being,
said that becoming what we can truly be, growing into that which is
inherently in us when we are born, is what the process of individuation is
all about.
Maslow, who brought us the hierarchy of needs said that in order to self-
actualize, we need to become everything that we are capable of
becoming.
Joseph Campbell said we should follow our bliss.
Being Bored with the Self
All of these concepts refer in some way to self-knowledge, but also to
meaning. (See my June 2006 Newsletter Finding a Meaning in Your
Life).One can only be bored in one’s own company, if there is no meaning
in the life; if the individual has not yet bothered to think about what
meaning he or she could give to his or her life. I won’t delve more deeply
into that subject, as it has been dealt with in some detail in the afore-
mentioned article, but I do encourage you to explore it in order to begin to
understand how to find the meaning in your life.
Fear of Being Alone with the Self
If you fear being alone with yourself, perhaps you feel there is so much in
you that you hate, or despise, or judge, or criticize, that it is simply a very
dangerous proposition to spend time there…together with yourself. In
other words, it is scary to be with someone towards whom you have
these very negative feelings. So doesn’t it make sense to get to know this
person that you are inside and out, and to clean out, if necessary, all
those parts that are reprehensible, or, even better, to come to realize that
there are actually no really truly reprehensible parts, and that you are, in Enriching the Soil
fact, a rather enjoyable person to be with? But this is only possible if you Possibly the soil in which you are beginning your process of growth is not
take the journey inside in order to begin to get to know yourself…more particularly fertile at this time. You know that out there, in the external
importantly, in order to begin to love yourself. world, you can create a compost heap in order to enrich the soil you use
Many of the difficult feelings you may have about yourself can be for your plants. In the internal world you can begin to feed your soil (your
addressed by using the “energy barometer” I refer to in the article Your mind, heart, and soul), with reading and viewing material that will convert
Energy Barometer: Make Your Mind Body Connection Work for You. into great compost, rather than trashing your garden with leftover junk
Shifting your energetic vibration, in other words deliberately making food and plastic waste (which on the inner level might be likened to the
yourself feel better will automatically take you to other levels where your mass media shows and books or magazines that many people like to
thoughts and feeling about yourself will change. On those other, higher read and view as a steady diet, and which has no hope of ever converting
levels, it is so much harder for negative or low energy thoughts to find a into rich soil).
breeding ground. When you are feeling good, how often do you dwell on For more concrete pointers on these ideas, have a look at my blog,
downward-spiralling thoughts? When you are feeling good, you don’t specifically at the April 2, 2007 post Keep Energy High! Watch How You
want to cry. So shifting your energetic vibration to a higher level, is Feed Your Brain, Heart & Spirit in order to better understand this concept
something I encourage you to start practicing every single day, each and of maintaining rich soil in the inner garden. Read also the last few
every time you recognize that you are spiraling downward. paragraphs of the April 29, 2007 post Baelo Claudia: Roman Ruins and
Being Uncomfortable with the Self the "Now" in the same blog. Tend your garden well and watch the lush
process of your own inner growth that will take place. Only you can do
If you are uncomfortable with yourself, it may have much to do with the
this for yourself, and only you can make the decision to begin it now…
fact that you have simply not much knowledge of yourself, and so feeling
uncomfortable is similar to how you feel with a comparative stranger,
about whom you know little, and who therefore does not create the
sensation of ease and comfort a good friend does. Doesn’t it make sense
to try to become your own best friend? Again, in so doing, you will begin
to not only appreciate yourself, but also like and love yourself. Even
admire yourself. Imagine spending all your time with a friend about whom
you feel this way…and this friend is you!
Tending the Inner Garden
I wrote earlier that this process need not be difficult, tedious, and certainly
does not require the services of a therapist. It does, however, entail
something akin to gardening. When you plant a seed in the garden of
your house, or in a pot on your terrace, you know very well, that in order
for it to grow into a strong oak tree, an elegant palm that sways in the
wind, a rose, a geranium, sweet-smelling rosemary, or a flowering
perfumed hibiscus, it first needs soil (preferably rich), water, sunlight,
care, and constancy. The inner garden is no different.
Controlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the difference as compared to the initial mode of reacting you had intended.
By consciously choosing to react differently, you are not only controlling
People in Them yourself by self-awareness, but you are also changing yourself because
your reaction is no longer unconscious, and thus you are offering yourself
one of the greatest gifts of all - freedom from that blindness.
Many of us fall into the fallacy of believing that we can control our
environment and the persons who people it. Therefore, we steadfastly
cling to the mistaken belief that if only we could make our spouse more
emotionally available, or if only we could make our parents less intrusive,
or if only we could make our boss more approachable, or if only we could
make our teenage offspring more manageable, or if only we could make
our neighbours less noisy, life would be wonderful. And we spend our
time working on devising ways of changing these people, driven by the
conviction that this would be the solution to all or most of our problems.
The truth of the matter is that the only one we actually can control is our
self.
Other Side of the Coin
We rarely look at this other side of the coin…the fact that if we want to
achieve any kind of change in our lives, it has to begin with our self.
Frequently change that we bring about in our own person will motivate
change in others, almost like a ripple effect that can be observed in a
pond when you throw a pebble into the water, but this change in others,
or in the environment should not be the stimulus to your own change.
That should be sought for itself, in order that you can become more of
what you really are, and are capable of being; in other words, in order
that you grow into yourself. (see my article “Leaving Your Comfort Zone”),
The Silver Bullet
Evidently the eternal question is: how do you change or control yourself?
What is the magic formula? Is there a silver bullet? And the simple
answer is choice. Knowing that no matter what you feel, think, say, or do,
you always have choices and alternatives, is one of the most enriching
and liberating thoughts there is. When you are reacting to a given event,
brought upon by your own thoughts, a nostalgic song on the radio,
another person, a difficult financial situation, or even a cataclysmic global
incident, always ask yourself whether there are alternatives to your
current way of reacting. Then ask yourself whether any of those
alternatives are feasible, and whether they would make a positive
Giving Birth to Yourself
Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author of The Art of Loving among many
other books, wrote: A person's main task in life is to give birth to oneself.
Giving birth to yourself can happen at any age. You could be in your 70's,
you could be a teenager, you might be in your mid-thirties: it makes no
difference, you can make this exhilarating change in your life at any time.
Why is it exhilarating? It has to do with you finding the real you...the one
that was meant to be...the one that senses a true meaning and purpose
in his or her life...and the one that will bring you to greater levels of joy,
fulfillment, and happiness than any other aspect of you, barring none.
(See also Keep Your Energy High)
When we begin to look at our lives (and again, let me insist that this is not
a question of age), from the point of view of growth and purpose; when
we realize that we are here for more than the accumulation of honor,
prestige, money, and things, much as those are all perfectly valid
elements of a good life, then we begin to know that there is another way
of looking at how we can continue to develop, that has much more to do
with the eternal validity of our souls than with anything else.
The Inner Life
We begin to become interested in our own inner life - not in a selfish
fashion, not born of our ego - because this inner life is precisely what can
most clearly point the way towards our own birth. The fact that our
intuition is hugely involved in this process, should surprise no one. You
may have heard of the fact that scientists now refer to our second and
third brains (see also my May 2006 Newsletter about this subject), with
regards to the billions of neural cells they now know we have in our gut
(intestine) and heart, respectively. These neural cells offer intelligent
information of another kind to our being, so that in conjunction with the
logical information we receive via the neural cells in our brain, we also
receive intuitive and emotional information from the neural cells in our gut
and heart respectively. Together, the three types of information - if we will
but use them in conjunction - allow us to make choices that are much
more informed than those that originate merely from our rational brain.
Intuitive Intelligence
Our intuitive intelligence has much to offer us. It can speak to us in the
language of our innermost self ... of that part of us that is not only the part
that is visible to the naked eye, the part that others can see, but also of
that innermost part of us that has always existed, and that will always be.
To understand its language is to understand how we can give birth to
ourselves. Hence, learning to listen to our intuition is of utmost
importance, and one of the best ways to do so, is to begin to allow our
hunches to lead us. (Also see the brief article about Gert Gigerenzer's
new book about the subject: Intuition Has Great Value After All!).
Listening to our intuition can be fomented by spending some time alone,
by meditating, by taking solitary walks, but above all, also by allowing the
little voice inside of you, when it comes up and nudges you about
something, to be heard. In other words, don't just ignore it, don't just tell
yourself that whatever it was that you just thought had no value, and that
therefore you will not pay any attention. Do something about it. Or notice
if right after, something happens, as in: I just thought of Aunt Mabel and
two minutes later she rings me. While this type of example is minimally
important, it does allow you to begin the process of better understanding
the role of intuition in your life.
Listening to our intuition also has a lot to do with our self esteem. If we
have not got a good sense of self esteem, we will not esteem that inner
voice and give it validity. Hence, understanding that our self esteem is
one of the most important parts of our own self that needs to be
enhanced by a process of self love, is high on the list of priorities towards
the goal of giving birth to yourself. It is precisely from this intuitive sector
of your being that you will get the greatest amount of vital information
about where to go and what to do in order to expedite your birth.
How do we find meaning in our lives? One of the easiest ways is to listen
with your inner ear to your bodily reactions to anything. Notice especially
a sense of excitement in your solar plexus, an increased rhythm of
breathing, heightened facial color and body temperature, as you hear a
conversation, listen to something on the radio, watch a documentary on
TV, because your body is giving you information about the importance of
the particular subject in question to you and your true purpose in life (see
also my June 2006 Newsletter: Finding a Meaning For Your Life). This
inner listening is totally connected to your intuition and your emotional
self, and it is another way of strengthening the inner dialogue in order to
give birth to yourself. (See also Using Your Emotions to Learn About
Yourself).
Here are some further ideas about how you can go about this important
process of change:
The Life You Don't Lead
Oscar Wilde said: One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Why would that be one's real life? Think for a moment how frequently you
get side-tracked by what others think. You have a plan or a desire or an
idea, and then, because of censure you feel you might receive from
others or because someone says something to you that is critical or
derisory about what you are planning, you set your own ideas aside.
So therefore your own ideas have been annihilated. And you can't really
blame the other person - they merely stated their opinion. The problem is
that you listened, and let it affect you to the point that you buried your
own thoughts and are now living life - at least in this respect - according
to what the other person has said...and where is your own life?
The Unexamined Life
It was Socrates who in 399 BCE said the unexamined life is not worth
living.
Most of us live unexamined lives. Why? Because that is how our world -
generally speaking - is. We may examine our outer circumstances: our
profession, our homes, our standing in society, our finances, etc., but we
tend not to examine our inner lives.
History - world history - has shown us that there are certain cycles that
repeat with some regularity, and that we can learn from in order to avoid
mistakes of the past, and potentiate other, stronger, and more positive
aspects.
Interestingly, humanistic astrology also focuses on cycles in the human
life span, and uses, for example, the planet Saturn to determine when
those cycles take place in the life of an individual. Once determined, and
especially if the individual is no longer a young person, by virtue of past
cycles, the current and future cycles can be much better understood (not
predicted...this is not about fortune telling, but about understanding).
However, even with these tools, past cycles can only be understood if the
individual has made an effort at examining the events - inner and outer -
of his or her life.
Economic and business cycles also study the fluctuations of the market
and the changes in any given economy or society. Also see Gregg
Braden’s latest book Fractal Time.
Therefore, it would seem that examining one's life is also truly important,
if one has any interest whatsoever in understanding it and oneself.
Examining one's own life is not tremendously difficult, but it does pose
some awkwardness for those not versed in this kind of activity, as it
involves time with oneself. I have found that for some people journaling is
a good activity, as it allows them to bring out inner feelings and thoughts
that they may not be so very much aware of in ordinary everyday life.
More than journaling, however, I also recommend that a sheet of paper
be taken for every year of the life. Then, simply write down those things
that you know: residence, which family members (and pets) lived with
you, school, friends, etc., progressing to further education, jobs, partners,
cities of residence, and so on. As you fill in obvious bits, you begin to
remember others. Jot them down in bullet fashion, in order to flesh out
your own forgotten and unexamined life. This is the beginning to greater
understanding. You may see how decisions you took at age 22 led you to
expansion and growth at age 29, that in turn led you to other avenues at
36. Or you may see the reverse. You may notice that whenever you had
one type of calamity, your reactions were of a given type, that led, some
time in the future, to another version of the same calamity. Now you are in
the middle of facing another one. Perhaps - due to this examination of
your life - you may now decide to react differently.
However you do it, examining the life is always of great value. You may
even find it fascinating!
Inauthentic Lives
Many well-known and respected speakers refer to people who live
inauthentic lives. The sense I get from them, is not that they are criticizing
these people, but that they are suggesting that living an inauthentic life
may lie at the root of much unhappiness and desperation that is often
covered up with sex, eating, drinking, drugs, shopping, non-stop
deadening of the senses with television and mass media, an incessant
social life, and so on.
Inauthentic is defined as "false, not genuine", and what is false and not egotistical, inconsiderate, without concern for others. Factually, they
genuine about an inauthentic life, is the fact that the person living it is not generally mean more than that. „Not to be selfish“ implies not to do what
in connection with his or her true self. one wishes, to give up one's own wishes for the sake of those in
authority; i.e., the parents, and later the authorities of society."
That is to say, this individual is generally living a life that he or she feels And Fromm continues: "„Don't be selfish,“ in the last analysis, has the
should be lived, a life perhaps that the parents expected, or a life that the same ambiguity that we have seen in Calvinism. Aside from its obvious
partner or spouse expects, or simply that this individual feels should be implication, it means, „don't love yourself,“ „don't be yourself,“ but
the life to be lived in order to live up to someone else’s expectations. It’s submit your life to something more important than yourself, be it an
often also a life in which much greater importance and value are given to outside power or the internalization of that power as „duty.“ „Don't be
the outer search for material abundance and social and professional selfish“ becomes one of the most powerful ideological weapons in
prestige (all of which are very worthwhile aims), than to the inner search suppressing spontaneity and the free development of personality. Under
for purpose and meaning and for connection to the self and others. (See the pressure of this slogan one is asked for every sacrifice and for
also my April and May 2006 Newsletters: Losing the Connection and complete submission: only those aims are „unselfish“ which do not serve
Tending Your Inner Garden). the individual for his own sake but for the sake of somebody or something
In an authentic life both the inner and the outer quest are given outside of him." (italics mine)
importance, a balance is sought, and the person soon recognizes that In that sense Fromm made a magnificent statement: "Selfish persons are
what most motivates him or her, and what most gives satisfying meaning incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves
and significance to the lifetime, is something that literally comes from either."
within; something that emanates from the deepest inner self, and which
creates a true connection to the self. In Man For Himself Fromm wrote: "selfishness and self-love, far from
being identical, are actually opposites.
The Main Task in Life
Fromm is encouraging us to love ourselves in the sense that we can be
Back to Fromm who tells us that our main task in life is to give birth to ourselves, and in the sense that we can find ourselves, in the sense that
ourselves. In his article Selfishness and Self-Love, published in 1939, he we give birth to ourselves, by loving ourselves enough to walk this path.
damns modern culture, Calvin, Kant and others due to a pervasive taboo
of selfishness. This ideology teaches “that to be selfish is sinful and that
to love others is virtuous. Selfishness, as it is commonly used in these
ideologies, is more or less synonymous with self-love. The alternatives
are either to love others which is a virtue or to love oneself which is a sin."
Fromm becomes even more damning as he continues his assault on our
societal mores concerning self-love: "The doctrine that selfishness is the
arch-evil that one has to avoid and that to love oneself excludes loving
others is by no means restricted to theology and philosophy. It is one of
the stock patterns used currently in home, school, church, movies,
literature, and all the other instruments of social suggestion. „Don't be
selfish“ is a sentence which has been impressed upon millions of
children, generation after generation. It is hard to define what exactly it
means. Consciously, most parents connect with it the meaning not to be
Cellular Responsibility: Getting Your Power
Back
He not busy being born is dying.
Bob Dylan
Remember how long the days seemed when you were a kid? It took
forever to get from one part of the week to the next, and don’t even
mention a month … that was like a whole year … Why was it so different
then?
Tolle and the Now
Quite simple really, and I’ve talked about this in the past in other articles:
my May 2008 newsletter – Where Are You Now?, or an earlier article:
Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life. What is simple about the
reason why our days no longer last as long as they did when we were
kids is because we progressively live less and less time in the present
moment. When we were kids and we were building a sand castle, all our
attention was on that activity. When we were devouring a piece of
birthday cake, all our attention was on that activity.
Now we are splintered into many pieces, and while we do a present-time
activity, we are also in different places of the past or future in our mind,
hence the present moment is robbed of its fullest potential, we are torn
into different directions, and when we have finished with the present-time
activity, we often have a difficult time remembering much about it,
because so little of our present self was present!
Remember that now is all you have … your true life is not in your past,
and it is not in your future … it is only and ever now, in the present
moment. Nevertheless, although our rational mind recognizes the
inherent truth in this, it does present a number of challenges to the
psyche. How can we get ourselves into present time and stay there?
Stimuli in Your Life Capture Your Power
What stimuli in your life capture your power so that it goes to places and
times other than where you are now? Here are just a few examples:
 Music: imagine you are driving in the car, enjoying the gorgeous
day, and a song comes on that is full of bitter-sweet nostalgia for
you. It transports you into the glory and the pain of a past
relationship. Suddenly you are no longer enjoying the gorgeous
day; on the contrary, you are re-living parts of the magnificence of
that past relationship, and then you are swept up into the pain of
other pieces of it. By the time you reach your destination, you not
only no longer feel as wonderful as you did when you began your
drive, but you no longer remember the actual drive … all because
a song was played on the radio
 Smells, perfumes, aromas: imagine you are being introduced to a
stranger at a cocktail party. Imagine you are a woman, and the
stranger is a man, and as you come in a bit closer to say hello, or
as you touch cheeks, as we do in so many countries, you get a
whiff of his cologne. It is your father’s cologne. Immediately, in
some fashion, you either associate the stranger with your father, or
you go into a memory of the past, perhaps of you sitting in your
parents’ bedroom, chatting with your father as he splashed on the
cologne, and that memory takes you to another moment with your
father when he told you he was leaving your mother and you
because he had met another woman… Now the cocktail party is
tinged with that memory, the feelings it evoked, and after you get
home, you may find you scarcely remember any of the
conversations you had while you were there … all because of a
cologne.
 Movies with specific scenes: these can have a similar effect on you
as the above, and you may find that you frequently are attracted to
movies that cause you to relive the emotions of certain parts of
your life
In this regard, Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now refers to the
pain body and Chris Griscom (The Healing of Emotions and Ecstasy is a
New Frequency) refers to the emotional body.
Essentially both terms refer to that part of us that likes to wallow in our
pain. What, you say? Why on earth would I want to wallow in something
painful? The answer becomes obvious. Because it is a place you know.
Because you feel at home there. In other words, we have been there so
often before, in this place of pain, that when faced with a choice of doing
something new and unknown, or wallowing, it is much easier to fall back
to the well-trodden path and wallow. We don’t really even think about it.
We just go there, because it is familiar. And then we feel comfort in the
familiarity of the pain. Recognize this? Have you been there? And are you
tempted right now, despite what you have read to this point, to go back to
your painful thoughts? Does that just feel so much easier? (quoted almost
verbatim from my article Entering the Now Moment By Leaving
Unawareness Behind).
In a sense, that is what we do when we hear the song on the radio, when
we catch a tantalizing whiff of the familiar cologne, or when we see
certain scenes of some movies. And we go to that place of pain
unconsciously because we are not aware of ourselves. Or we may be
aware enough to realize what is going on, but we have not yet decided to
take on our own responsibility for ourselves. (see also Claiming
Responsibility For the Self or these articles about responsibility).
Molecular & Cellular Biology … Genes & DNA
So now I want to really throw an unexpected thought out there at you…if,
as I have written in past articles, our thoughts do indeed influence our
body, our cells, our genes, our very DNA (see also Create a New Life:
One Intention at a Time or Thoughts Create Molecules, or my March
2008 newsletter: How Your Thoughts Change Your Body), then it stands
to reason that by continually re-visiting the past and re-living past pain,
we are negatively influencing the very cells of our body. Read some of the
work by cellular and molecular biologists Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton,
read what scientific researcher Masaru Emoto has to say, look into the
quantum research done by endocrinologist Deepak Chopra, but whatever
you do, don’t rest back on your chair, make a puzzled face, and say I
don’t believe this nonsense. You can’t say that until you’ve read the
research.
For those of you who still find it hard to believe that thoughts could affect
your body … here are some more common and everyday physiological
examples:
 Some individuals are capable of reaching orgasm simply by their
thoughts
 Some individuals are able to provoke tears simply by Imagining
something and crying because of it
 Biofeedback has taught us that we can measurably alter our
heartbeat, our tension and stress
Therefore, if we know this to be true, it follows that we need to consider
taking cellular responsibility for ourselves.
Cellular responsibility?
Part of Your Energy Is In Your Past
How much of you is in “your story” and would be lost if you let it go? So
then you might have to work on a whole new you … depending on how
you think about that, it is actually quite exciting … you would no longer be
burdened by that old, sad awful story you’ve been dragging around with
you.
You do see that because of your story, part of your energy, part of your
power is in your past, right? If you identify with your story, if that is how
you define yourself, then a portion of your power is there and not here.
Getting Your Fragments Into Present Time
Getting the fragments of yourself into present time (Gary Zukav, author of
The Seat of the Soul calls it a splintered personality), is a necessary part
of the process of taking cellular responsibility for yourself. So there’s bit of
you in 1976, and another bit in 1960, and another bunch of bits in the
early 80’s and so on depending on when, in your history, things happened
to you that continue to maintain a part or parts of you, especially
emotionally, there, at that moment in time. The anchor that holds you
there is the negative emotion that you continue to feel every time that you
remember the painful event. That means there are only a few bits of you
in 2008 … until you leave those past bits - that hold so much of your
power – behind, you will not be able to get your power back, and you will
not be able to take cellular responsibility for yourself.
Unfinished Business
You know that you have unfinished business with parents, with your
spouse or your partner, your kids, your siblings, your friends, your
bosses, your teachers, and so on, if you continue to have negative
emotions of any kind when you think about them or past events involving
them. Those negative emotions are the ones that can adversely influence
your body, your cells, and it is precisely those negative emotions that are
at the bottom of what it is you need to begin to take responsibility for, if
you want to take cellular responsibility for yourself. Finishing up that
unfinished business will automatically mean that you will spend a much
greater amount of time in the present instead of in the past, and that you
will spend far less time focusing on negative emotions from events that
took place in the past.
The Importance of Forgiving & the Law of Attraction
Once you can forgive, the unfinished business from the past transforms
into a mere memory that no longer carries any negative connotations to
pull your power away from the present. It is at this point that you can
begin to take cellular responsibility for yourself, i.e. you will no longer be
harming your body in all senses of the word by keeping that negative
power in the past.
Caroline Myss (from whose work I have borrowed the term cellular
responsibility) pointed out almost a decade ago in 1999 in The Science of
Medical Intuition, together with Dr. Norman Shealy, that it is also at this
point that you can begin to create and manifest. In other words, no matter
how much visualization and affirmation you are doing, those of you who
have been vicariously reading everything you can get your hands on
about the Law of Attraction or The Secret, you will not be able to create,
until you pull your power into the present. Forgiving those who have
trespassed you is one of the biggest steps towards that goal.
Quotes about forgiving by Caroline Myss:
 By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to
forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional
resources. The challenge is to refine our capacity to love others as
well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness.
 Forgiveness is no longer an option but a necessity for healing.
 One of the greatest struggles of the healing process is to forgive
both yourself and others and to stop expending valuable energy on
the past hurts.
 In order to heal oneself, we must learn how to forgive.
 Forgive and call back the energy wasted on past events.
 The act of forgiveness is the act of returning to present time. And
that's why when one has become a forgiving person, and has
managed to let go of the past, what they've really done is they've
shifted their relationship with time.
Some Tools
Doing some of what follows will lead you down the road to cellular
responsibility where you will be able to begin to recover your power.
 Become aware of yourself, your reactions to stimuli, your need to
go into the pain body
 Decide you will be responsible for yourself in all senses of the
word
 Make better choices because now you are aware and have
decided to become responsible
 Look at your unfinished business
 Ask yourself if there are any good reasons to be feeling guilty …
what will get better by feeling guilty?
o Rather than beating yourself up about what you did, why not
learn from it, vow to never do it again, and move on. If not,
more of your power stays there
 If you are ashamed of something about yourself, ask yourself if
you would like to get rid of feeling like that?
o Shame tends to involve lack of self esteem
o Shame is often the root cause of obsessive thinking b/c it
allows you to focus on another person as the solution to
your problems
 Does reliving the past help make anything better?
o Can I recognize that continuing to hurt about past events
won’t solve a problem?
 Forgive
o Whom do you need to forgive?
o Why are you unwilling to forgive?
o Recognize that not forgiving holds parts of you in the past
o Understand that forgiving does not mean you condone what
was done, nor does it mean you now need to have a
wonderful relationship with that person … you may need to
move on, but by forgiving, the hold that the event had over
you, will be gone.
o Forgiving also does not mean forgetting – but it does mean,
removing the charge from the memory

 Gratitude – this is a really big one: read more in my January 2008

Newsletter: Love and Gratitude are on Your Road to Freedom as
well as the December 2006 Newsletter: Gratitude, Choice, and the
“Why Did This Happen To Me?” Syndrome
 Mindfulness (see in particular Wherever You Go, There You Are by
Jon Kabat-Zinn) - this is strongly connected to gratitude because
gratitude can be your first step in learning how to be mindful; by
being grateful for something right now, you automatically return to
the now, and by learning to be mindful, you will be able to remain
in the now.
Entering the Now Moment by Leaving
Unawareness Behind
If you could enter a state of instant peace whenever you feel anxious,
worried, angry, or afraid, would you not want to go there? Would you not
want someone to tell you how to get there? And what the procedure to
walk down that road would be?
Body — Mind — Spirit
The process of getting there is always based on the same premise –
whether you are worried about your finances, a life-threatening illness,
the impending demise of an important relationship, or about your
teenaged daughter who is on drugs, whether you fear you will never get
the promotion at work, or you fear standing up to face the Board of
Directors for the first time in order to present the annual budget, or
whether you fear telling your partner that you will no longer accept his or
her emotional abuse. This process of getting to a state of instant peace
moves you from your body to your mind and emotions, and finally to your
spirit.
You Always Have a Choice
As you contemplate the dilemma or fear that is plaguing you, bring this
thought into your mind, and surround yourself with all of its latent
possibilities: You always have a choice. (See my February 2006
Newsletter: “Making Choices: Taking Responsibility for your Life”). So this
means, of course, that if you are steadfastly convinced that you will
bungle the presentation because of your fear of speaking in public, you
begin to realize that your belief about this is a choice you have made. And
in the same way you made one choice, you can make another, such as
choosing to believe that you will be able to speak well, and make a
successful presentation.
What if you believe that you will not be able to live if your partner deserts
you, or because your partner is having an affair with someone else?
Again…the belief you hold is your choice. (See also my article “I Need
You…I Need You Not”). So you could potentially choose to believe that
you will get on with your life, and that this difficult emotional situation will
make you stronger. Or you could choose to believe that if someone
wishes to desert you, or has been unfaithful to you, it means that you are
better off without that person in your life. Or you could choose to believe
that a frustration of such proportions is in your life in order for you to learn
something about yourself (see also my article “Committed Relationships:
Use Them to Grow Towards Self-Understanding and Real Love”).
Body
Now breathe gently to relax. Even if the thought or worry or fear
continues to make you hyperventilate or break out in a sweat, just
breathe gently to relax. Watch your breath for a moment or two, and
continue breathing gently. Now observe your body for a few moments. Is
your stomach clenched? Your breathing shallow? Your heart pounding?
Your temples throbbing? Continue to breathe gently and slowly, and just
for a few moments observe your breath. In and out. In and out. Gently.
Continue observing your body in order to notice how it gently slows down
and begins to release its frantic hold on your nerves. Breathe gently. In
and out. In and out. Gently.
Mind & Emotions
Now allow yourself to become aware of your self-talk and your emotions
related to the thought, worry, or fear. Self-talk is often sabotaging and
harmful bringing about further negative emotions, and sometimes,
conversely, negative emotions bring about sabotaging self-talk. It’s a two-
way street whose provenance neuroscientists, biologists, and
psychologists have not yet determined. Do emotions cause thoughts or
vice versa? Antonio Damasio (The Feeling of What Happens) and
Candace Pert (Your Body is Your Sub-conscious Mind), among others,
have researched this subject extensively.
So now you are breathing gently, aware of your body, and immersed in
your self-talk. Grounding yourself is a wonderful way to cut the vicious
cycle of sabotaging self-talk. If you just tell yourself that thinking that way
is of no use, it’s my bet that your thoughts will continue to course about
the hated or dreaded subject. So ground yourself. An easy exercise while
you are driving is this: look at the license plate on the car in front of you.
Sum its digits. If you come up with a two-digit number as a result, sum up
those numbers as well. So GRZ 9482 adds up to 23, which adds up to 5.
Do this with several cars until you notice that the thoughts have gone.
You notice this because you are actually thinking about something totally
different or nothing at all. Another exercise, should this one not have
worked for you due to its ease, or because you are not driving, is this:
think of any two or three-digit number and multiply it by another two or
three-digit number in your head. This will be certain to ground you and
get your thoughts away from your self-talk, because it is so difficult – for
most – to do, and requires much concentration.
In this new state of mind you now find yourself, with no – at least just now
– negative emotions or thoughts spilling over – create substitutes for your
previous self-talk and infuse these with positive emotion. So for example,
you might think of yourself as speaking with ease at the Board Meeting
and giving a successful presentation, at the same time as you imagine
how good you would feel afterwards. This positive feeling about the
intended results is very important. Any type of new self-talk or imagining
should always contain within it strong positive feelings about the intended
result. This intentional focusing (also see my March 2006 Newsletter:
“Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, & the Law of
Attraction”) on what it is you would like to create or bring about in your
life, is an important ingredient in getting to the state of instant peace
referred to at the beginning of this article.
Pain Body – Emotional Body
So at this point you have focused – with feeling and intentionality – on
positive substitutes for your previous negative self-talk, and you now
need to become aware of another hugely important ingredient of the
process. Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) refers to this as the pain body
and Chris Griscom (The Healing of Emotions and Ecstasy is a New
Frequency) refers to it as the emotional body.
Essentially both refer to that part of us that likes to wallow in our pain.
What, you say? Why on earth would I want to wallow in something
painful? The answer becomes obvious. Because it is a place you know.
Because you feel at home there. In other words, we have been there so
often before, in this place of pain, that when faced with a choice of doing
something new and unknown, or wallowing, it is much easier to fall back
to the well-trodden path and wallow. We don’t really even think about it.
We just go there, because it is familiar. And then we feel comfort in the
familiarity of the pain. Recognize this? Have you been there? And are you
tempted right now, despite what you have read to this point, to go back to
your painful thoughts? Does that just feel so much easier?
The Observer – The Witness
So as you become aware of your attachment to pain, also observe your
compulsion to talk and think about it. Observe how you automatically go
to this place of pain. And in so observing, begin to realize that you can
make conscious choices in your thoughts, actions, reactions, and
feelings, in order to leave this well-known place where you have been
keeping yourself prisoner.
As you observe yourself automatically wanting to go to this place of pain,
you notice that there is a difference between the “you” that observes and
the “you” that wants to go to the place of pain. The observer, or the
witness to your thoughts and feelings is separate from the one who wants
to go to the place of pain. Tolle says: “Be at least as interested in your
reactions [thoughts and feelings] as in the situation or person that causes
you to react”. And he adds: “Whenever you are able to observe your
mind, you are no longer trapped in it”. As you do this, as you become the
watcher, the observer, the witness of your own mind, you bring yourself to
the present moment. You are no longer in that fitful, needy, hurtful,
distressing past or future, because your observation of the part of you
that is in those places, has brought you to the present in order to be able
to observe, watch and witness.
Spirit
In doing this, you also become aware of your eternal self - the part of you
that watches is not the part that will wither and die - the part that watches
is eternal, and will forever exist. From the vantage point of your eternal
self (imagine looking at your eternal existence from a high mountain,
overlooking valleys too numerous to count, where your “current you” is
one of those valleys), your “current you” and its pressing problems loses
some of this urgency. As you access that part of you, as you recognize
your eternal essence, you enter the Now moment, and you gift yourself
with peace.
This entire process takes much longer to describe than to put into
practice, and once you begin practicing it, you will find it easier and easier
to access each time you do so. It gives you immeasurable relief from
stress and anxiety, fear and worry, pain and distress. The more you do it,
the more you become the observer of your thoughts and feelings, the
more you give your awareness to your eternal self and remain in the Now,
the less time you will be spending in wallowing in the pain body or the
emotional body. As you eliminate your ties to those connections, your life
will begin to change automatically because of the new focus you are
giving it.
Remember: observe your feelings, thoughts, or reactions. Identifying with
the observer brings you to consciousness. Remember that your “observer
self” is eternal. As you remember, you leave the painful place in your
thoughts, feelings, or reactions that causes you such anguish, because
by observing, you place yourself in the Now moment in which there is no
room for past or future. The Now contains only the Now. Focusing on it
means you are unable to focus on pain because pain comes from
elsewhere. And that brings you to the beginning of the state of peace.
Always.
Do You Dance?
Are Joy & Happiness Major Components of Your Life?
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he
counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough
happiness provided for it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
When do you dance?
I'm talking about dancing in your life, not at night at a club.
 Dancing in your life has to do with joy, with exuberance, with letting
go, with letting your hair down, with feeling free to be you and
exhilarate in the unrepressed delight of being you.
 Dancing in your life has to do with knowing that life can be as good
as you allow it to be, despite your outer circumstances (see also
The Greatest Quality in Life).
 Dancing in your life has to do with the thrill of knowing you have
choices, as long as you choose to have choices at least on an
inner level, even though externally your choices may be very
limited.
 Dancing in your life has to do with being conscious and aware.
 Dancing in your life has to do with doing your joyful utmost to
pursue your dreams because your dreams give your life meaning
(see also The Only Person You Have to Make Happy is You –
there is much good information in this article about the difference
between selfishness and self-love).
 Dancing in your life has to do with surrounding yourself with joy,
love, and peace, even though these may only available on an inner
level.
 Dancing in your life has to do with knowing that you will not die
without having danced to the music that is inside of you.
Have you danced lately?
Taking Responsibility for Your Unhappiness
Yeow.
That is not a fun thought
Taking responsibility for your unhappiness sounds like there's no one and
nothing left to blame. And that - of course - is what this is all about.
It’s the Other Person’s Fault
When you are unhappy, it is often because you have chosen to be so due
to someone not behaving the way you wanted them to, or something not
turning out the way you might have it expected to. So life did not go your
way. Things simply weren't the way you wanted them to be.
• your partner forgot your wedding anniversary
• your boss did not promote you
• you wanted to go to the beach and when you opened the curtains,
you saw it was raining
• you expected to be able to find the car of your dreams for the
budget you had stipulated, and then realized it would cost much
more. So now you have to make do with a lesser car
• you thought the person you had dinner with the first time two
nights ago would call you by today, and they have not done so
• you expected your son to help you with the garden this weekend
and he went out with his friends instead
• you expected your best friend to help you set up your party, and it
turns out she forgot!
And so - understandably - you are unhappy.
And of course you believe you are unhappy because of what the other
person did or did not do, or because of the situation that did not turn out
the way you would have liked it to (see also Making Choices: Taking
Responsibility For Our Lives )
And that is precisely where you need to begin to take responsibility for
your unhappiness.
How?
By taking responsibility for your happiness. So if you are unhappy about
something, you are the one who can change how you feel. Either by
choosing to change how you feel about something, how you think about
something, how you view something, or by choosing to do something that
will raise your energy to levels where you are able to once again feel
happy.
Your happiness is in your hands. If you leave it in the hands of the acts
and deeds of others, or in the manner in which situations in your life turn
out, you are not free.
Freedom implies being in charge of your happiness.
Creating Joy in the Way Your Life Unfolds
So it means that it is also about your responsibility in creating joy in the
way your life unfolds.
 No, I can't do that.
 My life is not unfolding to plan.
 My life is not good.
 I don't like my life.
 Under such circumstances how do you expect me to create joy in
the way my life unfolds?
That is, however, precisely it. Most of our lives don't always unfold
according to plan, or in the best way possible. That's the reason why we
have to take charge about creating joy in the way our life unfolds.
If we do that, we begin to see joy appear in the most unexpected ways
and in the most unexpected places. Once that happens, we are well on
the road to experiencing joy in our lives at will, no matter what the
circumstances.
How can we create joy? How can we become responsible in creating joy
in the way in which our life unfolds? By deciding to do so. It's a choice. So
simple. Start now.
Our Joys
Our joys as winged dreams do fly; why then should sorrow last? Since
grief but aggravates thy loss, grieve not for what is past. Thomas Percy,
English poet 1729-1811
Grieve not for what is past ... our joys as winged dreams do fly ... doesn't
it make sense that we behave the same way with our grief as we do with
our joy? As the poet - Thomas Percy - says, our joys tend to leave us very
quickly. And yet we dwell on our sorrows.
This is in fact, an unusually interesting statement about the human
condition. We have a much greater tendency to stay with those aspects of
our lives that are not bright and clear, that do not have sunshine and
warmth, and tend to bring on the clouds swollen with rain. Why do we do
this? Is it just a wired into us? Wired into our hearts? Wired into our
brains?
I don't think so. This may very well be due to what part Eckhart Tolle calls
the pain body, and what Chris Griscom calls the emotional body. I've
written about this in the past, so I'll just briefly reiterate the basic points:
• the pain body is seductive
• the emotional body has an emotionally sticky quality that we find
hard to pull away from
• both pain body and emotional body are familiar to us because they
represent pain, difficulties, and hardships that we have been
subject to in the past
• this very familiarity based on the amount of time we have spent
revisiting those difficult moments, is what causes us to field the
seductive pull
• once we give in to the seductive pull into the pain or the negative
emotions via our memory needs, we tend to wallow in the pain,
much as pigs wallow in mud
• why?
• Because we prefer the familiarity
• if we spent as much time revisiting our joyful moments as we do
our painful ones, we might find - ironically - that we experience
greater familiarity with our joy than with our pain - and wouldn't that
be a wonderful state of mind to be in...
Have you ever considered why the sum total of your life very possibly
seems to have an uneven tipping of the scale in favor of the negative?
Could it not be simply because of where you spend much of your mental
time? And don't you agree that where you spend much of your mental can feel how great it is, also create ripple effects in their lives, affecting
time is a matter of choice? And if it is a matter of choice, why not spend the people whose lives they touch, the potential for more and more
more time with your memories of the joyful moments, as opposed to people to create ripple effects grows exponentially.
memories of the painful ones? It really is that easy. If only you will work on yourself to heal and change yourself, you can
So Are You Being Responsible --- About the Joy in Your Life? have the potential to be the catalyst for change in the lives of many
others. And that will change our world.
We know we are meant to be responsible about all those things that a
decent sense of morality and a firm Puritan work ethic would demand of See also:
us. • Create a New LIfe: One Intention At A Time
But being responsible for the joy in our lives seems to throw our thoughts • Entering the Now Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind
(and even emotions) into turmoil.
• Gratitude, Choice, and the "Why Did This Happen To Me?
How, you ask. How can I be responsible for the joy in my life if my partner Syndrome
or spouse / parent / child / colleague / boss / friend, etc. does what they
do and make my life difficult / miserable / impossible / painful / • Grow in Richness: Stop the Blaming
exasperating, etc.? • Happiness: Has it Become a Science or is it a Question of Luck?
Simple. • Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, and the Law of
By deciding that you will be in charge of the joy in your life. By deciding at Attraction
each moment - no matter what it contains - that you will seek joy, or at • Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life
least, that you will seek the road that allows you to remain in a state of
equanimity, which will - eventually - return you to joy. If you furthermore
• Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives
receive joyful moments thanks to some of those others who populate your • Nurture Yourself to Happiness and Success
life, wonderful! But if you don't, and if you decide to be in charge of the joy • Tending Your Inner Garden
in your life, you will have joy whether you receive it from others or not.
• The Energy Barometer: Make Your Mind Body Connection Work
The Greatest Gift For the World is a Healthy You
For You
The more vibrant you are, the happier you are, the more conscious and • The Puritan Work Ethic, Wu-Wei, and is Life Really Meant to be a
aware you are, the more responsibility you take for your own inner and
Struggle?
outer well-being - the healthier you are.
And the healthier you are, the more you are able to give the world a gift: a
gift of this higher energetic frequency, a gift of all that you emanate, a gift
of your innate joyfulness ... innate, because you have made it so, and not
because you were born this way.
Can you imagine the ripple effects of all of this?
And then think of it in geometric progression: the ripple effects of your
presence will affect the people whose lives you touch. As they in turn,
should they choose to emulate your energetic frequency because they
Where Are You Now?
Asking yourself where am I now at intervals throughout your day in order
to discover not so much where you are physically, but where you have
gone in your mind will begin to show you how frequently you are not
present here and now.
When You’re Not in the Now
This is a problem of phenomenal proportions when we pause to consider
what happens when we are not in this now moment:
• we are concentrating on a problem or worry that is not part of what
we are actually doing now, and that therefore keeps us from being
present in what we are doing now
• we are reliving past pain and hurts that keep us from being present
in what we are doing now
• we are reliving past moments of joy that keep us from being
present in what we are doing now
• we are concentrating on future possibilities - good or bad - the
thought of which keeps us from being present in what we are doing
now
All of these examples indicate that we have left the only place where we
live, where we are, which is now.
Learn From Children
Take a moment to recall your childhood. Especially the parts in your
childhood when you were aware of time passing. Perhaps someone went
on a trip and it seemed to you that they had been gone forever. My father
had traveled to Europe on business when I was about seven and living in
Canada. A friend of my parents came to pick me up in order that I could
play with his young daughter. On the way to their house he asked me if I
had heard from my father. I told him how much I missed him and that he
had already been gone for about a year. The friend looked at me and said
It's only been three weeks.
Of course at that age it meant little to me, but I always remembered the
incident insomuch as it demonstrated to me as an adult, how malleable
time is. As a child a mere three weeks seemed endless to me.
Time is Fluid
Other examples you might resonate with are summer vacations. When
they started, they seemed to stretch into delicious infinity. Sometimes just
one single, solitary day seemed so long, so full of possibilities.
So fast forward to now. 2008. How long does a day seem? A week? A
month? Even a year? Isn't it true that now they seem to pass in a flash?
Monday comes, and as much as the work week may seem onerous,
before you know it, it's Friday evening. January begins, and before you
know it, it's Easter, then summer, fall, and Christmas is on us again.
What really causes this apparent speeding up of time?
Without going into any kind of scientific or quantum explanation, I'd like to
offer this: as children we live totally in the now. We pay attention to what
we are doing while we are doing it. When we are on a swing, that is what
we are involved with, with all our being. When we are building a sand
castle on the beach and collecting shells, and pebbles, seaweed, and
sticks to decorate it, we are involved with this creation with all our being.
When we watch a movie or read a book, we are involved with this activity
with all our being.
Not Being Involved in the Present Moment
However, as adults we tend not to be involved with what we are doing,
because we are off - in our minds - elsewhere. As illustrated earlier, we
are worrying about something that may never take place, or reminiscing
about something that already took place, or looking forward to something
that will take place once such and such happens. All of these modes of
thinking mean that we are not here and now. We are escaping the now
moment, either because we don't like it, or because not being in the now
moment has become such a habit, that we barely know how to remain
there anymore.
When Do You Live Your Life?
This is huge. If we are not in the now moment, I ask you, when do we live
our life? Now is all we have, as Eckhart Tolle so aptly pointed out in his
The Power of Now. And if now is all we have, does it not make sense that • We are Blessed, You are Blessed, I am Blessed
we learn - remember - how to remain present? • Gratitude (And Your State of Being)
Hence the question at the beginning of this article. Get into the habit of • Making Happiness a Priority
querying yourself about where you are at this particular moment. And
once you pull yourself back into it - even if it is while you are involved in • Being a Victim or Choosing Freedom
an activity that gives you little stimulation or joy - attempt to remain • Happiness and Gratitude
present, to do whatever it is you are doing with a sense of awareness,
and in order to determine whether you could - if you really put your mind
• Is Your Universe Friendly or Hostile ?
to it - derive satisfaction even from this (whatever it is). • Using Challenges to Grow, Instead of Fighting Problems to
More importantly, when you are involved in a pleasant activity, perhaps Overcome
spending time with your partner or children, or out on the golf course, or • Book Review 2 - Happiness Is A Choice
bicycling through the neighbourhood, and you ask yourself the question, if • Enthusiasm and Depression Can't Live in the Same Place
you then also find that you are elsewhere inside, you will realize how
monumentally important it is that you begin to be here now. Jon Kabat- • Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives
Zinn's book about mindfulness Wherever You Go, There You Are: • Gratitude, Choice, and the "Why Did This Happen to Me?"
Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life is excellent for further pointers, Syndrome
as is Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen: Love and Work, and also Tara
Bennett-Goleman's Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the
Heart.
I encourage you to explore your now. With some patience not only will
you find unaccustomed joy, but you will add years to your life, simply
because you will be so much more aware at so many more now moments
that will allow you to stretch your existence, making it malleable and
pliable, and resulting in a life of much greater proportions than what you
are currently experiencing.
Related Articles:
• All You Have Is Now
• Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life
• Baelo Claudia: Roman Ruins and the "Now"
• The Answer to Your Future May Not Lie in Your Past
• Entering the Now Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind
• Findng a Meaning For Your Life
• Happiness: Has it Become a Science, or is it a Question of Luck?
• Patience: Is it Really a Virtue?
Feeling Compassion: Only for the Hungry, or
Also for People Who Hurt You?
Most people have no problem in understanding how to feel compassion
for the poor and hungry from third-world countries, or even those in
similar positions in our own wealthier nations. And certainly, most people
understand why we would even begin to entertain the idea of feeling
compassion for people in such a predicament. It seems the normal,
human, charitable thing to feel, doesn’t it? This may even lead a good
portion of the people feeling such compassion to actually undertaking
something tangible that might ease the burden of those who suffer from
poverty, hunger, homelessness, persecution, etc.
Partners Who Hurt, Cheat, Lie
Often when clients walk into my office for the first time, they will expend
an inordinate amount of energy telling me, during that first session, how
much their partner, companion, or spouse has hurt them, cheated them,
lied to them, deceived them, manipulated them, changed on them, or
abandoned them, to name only a few. And, of course, I am expected to
empathize with their position, and essentially see that the other party is
someone who can only be defined in unspeakable terms.
It Takes Two to Tango…
At this point I frequently intervene and offer the opinion that it does take
two to tango (so, for example, if he/she did such-and-such to you, why did
you let it go on for so long?), and further, that no matter what “relationship
crime” the other party has actually “committed”, he/she also deserves
some compassion because who knows what has happened in their life up
to that point (and particularly in their early life) in order to bring them to
behave in such a despicable way.
This will occasionally merit me a baleful glare from my client. But often I
also see a glimmer of understanding, or even of agreement. Sometimes I
think it’s their way of assuaging their own angry thoughts at themselves
for having fallen in love with the other person at all, of justifying to
themselves that there was something wonderful there for them at the
beginning (as indeed there tends to be…see my article in the April 2006
Newsletter about Committed Relationships), and that therefore it is not
necessary to view themselves as total relationship failures for having
chosen so badly. Indeed. But there is more to be looked at.
The Why and the How of it all
Why we might feel compassion for someone who has hurt us seems to
be easy to understand. They may have become the way they now are;
this awful way they are behaving with us, in other words, because of, as
mentioned earlier, difficult traumas in their childhood, perhaps painful
relationship patterns prior to meeting us, or a myriad number of other
plausible reasons that might allow us to get a glimpse into the inner
makings of this other person.
But how do we go about feeling this compassion, when what we really
would like to do is wring their necks, or never let them see the children
again, or take them for what they’re worth and leave them without a
penny, or make them pay in some other way that will truly make them
realize just how much they have hurt us?
How do we find it in ourselves to bring up any measure of compassion
when they obviously are such absolutely awful people? People who have
perhaps hurt us more than anyone else. Deliberately. Hatefully. Viciously.
A betrayal of this nature, where once there was love, and now there is
only blackness, is perhaps more difficult to deal with than any other kind
of betrayal because we see it from the position of deliberateness on the
part of the other person. They wanted to hurt us. They did so knowingly.
Finding the Way to Compassion in the Mirror of our Self-Image
While major religions spend a great deal of time preaching compassion,
religion is by no means the only method to find your way to compassion.
Rather, I would venture to say, the first step might be by taking a look at
yourself. By seeing what is inside of you. By getting to know yourself,
your intentions, your desires, your needs, your fears, your vanities, your
pride, your ego, your priorities, your patience, and your degree of self-
awareness.
Self Awareness and Responsibility
Self-awareness is such a tricky thing. If you don’t have it, you generally
don’t know that you don’t have it, and when you begin to acquire it, you
keep forgetting about it until you make a discipline of it, of forcing yourself
to be self-aware at as many moments as possible in your life. Only then
does it have a chance of becoming second nature, and thus of you being
self aware at almost all times. This implies that you begin to take
responsibility for everything you feel, think, and do (see my February
2006 Newsletter: Taking Responsibility For Our Lives), and as you take
on responsibility for all that, you begin to understand that what another
person has done to you is his/her responsibility, his/her problem, his/her
issue to be resolved, and that no matter how much you may rant and rave
or crave revenge, you will never be able to change the other. You can
only change yourself. As we absorb the truth of this statement, we begin
to understand that what others do unto us is truly only interesting and
important from the point of view of how we react to their words or acts.
And how we react depends in large measure on our degree of self-
awareness. It is at this point that the possibility for compassion enters the
picture. The more self-aware you are, the more you know you have
choices and alternatives at every turn of the road. Therefore you begin to
understand that someone who has hurt you (hurting others generally
implies, among other things, fear in the one who hurts; fear of feeling
insecure, fear of chaos, fear of loss of control, etc., but that is a topic for
another article) has done so from a position of blindness, of a lack of self
awareness.
Careful now, I am not suggesting we simply excuse all these people and
say, “oh, they didn’t know what they were doing, so it’s ok”. Of course it’s
not ok. But because you are now capable of understanding where they
are coming from; in other words, from blindness, you are now able to feel
compassion. How they resolve their own issues that cause this behavior
on their part, is their problem. Perhaps you will want to be supportive in
helping them shed light on it, perhaps not. But in the meantime, you have
resolved an enormous issue of your own, by looking at yourself, by
resolving to become self-aware, and by choosing the path of compassion
rather than the path of hatred, anger, self-pity, or revenge (For more
about Destructive Emotions, see the collaboration in book format
between Western psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and
Buddhist scholars, narrated by Daniel Goleman).
Compassion for others does have a ripple effect. Try it and observe what
happens…not only with others, but most particularly, inside of you.
Do You Vibrate to a Tune that Serves You
Well?
Recently I drove through horrendous road construction going on in my
area. It was still very hot, the traffic was murderous, and due to the fact
that cars were stopping and starting, the cooling system did not work as
well as possible. Dust abounded. Stopped once again at yet another
traffic light, I was overjoyed to see a gorgeously vibrant purple flower
arising from the dirt at the side of the road, very close to my window. I
actually laughed out loud when I saw it, because it seemed to exemplify a
point I try to make so often: do you vibrate to a tune that serves you well?
How do you vibrate? Is it an inner vibration that only allows you to see the
tedium, the dirt, the noise, the delays, and the uncomfortable heat, or is it
an inner vibration that allows you to see the flowers arising from the dirt?
I remember visiting the city of Cordoba with its culturally rich mixture of
Roman, Moorish, Jewish, and Spanish architecture, history, and religion
in the sweltering heat one August Sunday morning, and overhearing a
couple complain loudly about the lack of air conditioning as they visited
one of the many sites in the Jewish quarter (la Judería). What they were
vibrating to, was their physical discomfort, as opposed to seeing the
immense variety of traditions and inter-mingled history this nearly 2000-
year-old city has to offer. It is simply a question of perspective. What are
you focusing on … what do you vibrate to?
These two examples are hugely important analogies applied to everything
we do in life. The perspective that we choose to have because of our
inner vibration can bring beauty to an outwardly ugly moment or ugliness
to an outwardly beautiful moment. You choose. (See also Happiness: Has
it Become a Science or is it a Question of Good Luck?)
But to be fair, long before you choose to focus on the purple flower at the
side of the road instead of the insufferable traffic and noise, and long
before you choose to focus on the lack of air conditioning in Cordoba’s
Jewish quarter, you have spent years making tiny choices here and there,
over and over again, that eventually led you to such a vibration.
So that is it in a nutshell: choices you make every day, all your life, bring
you to this place or that, just as following a specific road on a map, can
bring you to New York, or Moscow, or Santiago de Chile. But, let’s say
you are well on that road towards NYC, and you realize - due to any
number of circumstances – that it would be much better for you if you
actually were traveling towards New Orleans, or Cape Town, or Riyadh.
Then all you have to do is make minor adjustments in order that bit by bit,
you would actually find yourself on the road to the new city.
Again, that’s it in a nutshell: even if the choices you have made every day
of your life to this point in time have brought you to an inner vibration that
does not allow you to see the magnificent purple flower raising its head
above the dust, by making new choices every day from now on, you will
find yourself traveling towards a whole new perspective of life.
So: how do you begin to make new choices?
People who attend my workshops, or come to my speeches, or clients, or
those that write to me to make a comment about one of my articles, tell
me over and over again (not in so many words, but by how they react to
my answer), that they want the answer to that question about how you
begin to make new choices to be a one-time deal. In other words,
whatever it is they have to do, they want it to happen as a result of that
one time that they do it, that one major effort that they put into it. Which
reminds me of Zig ZIglar’s quote: “People often say that motivation
doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it
daily.” (See also Consciousness is a Full-time Job).
And in the case of beginning to make new choices, you make the
conscious decision to remember to do it daily. (See also Claiming
Responsibility for the Self). Even if that means pasting numerous post-it
notes to yourself all over your house, office, computer monitor and car. If
you don’t make new a new kind of choice on a daily basis, nothing in your
perspective will change. And it is your perspective that entirely colors how
you see your world. And that means that it also colors how you feel at all
times, how you interpret all events, and how you react to anything at all.
Here are some of the ways you can begin to make new choices:
 When you’re at the gym … or doing any kind of other physical
exercise (which in and of itself is a great choice to make) instead
of thinking about problems while you are there, find five things to
be grateful for at that moment in your life (see also Gratitude,
Choice & the ‘Why Did This Happen to Me?’ Syndrome)
 Wherever your eyes land, whether you are inside a building, your
home, or out somewhere, make a point of reminding yourself to
look for something beautiful … and if necessary, because you truly
can’t anything beautiful in that particular place, simply look inside
and find the beauty there
 Be present … be here and now as often as possible, as opposed
to living in the past or the future (see also Entering the Now
Moment By Leaving Unawareness Behind and Living in the NOW:
Use it to Enrich Your Life). Here’s another secret: being present –
being in the now, is the fastest way to co-creating your reality in
the way you desire.
 Be attentive to your gut feelings, to any intutive knowing that
comes to you … it will generally give you more information about
how you could choose to do things or react to things in a way that
is good for you
 Stop being reactive (reacting blindly to events and people), and be
proactive instead (reacting to events and people after taking an
inner reading about not only how you feel about this situation and
what your immediate response would be, but also about how you
will feel if you put that immediate response into action and whether
that will be worth it, and then asking yourself what other choices of
reaction you have). There are always other choices.
 Do something at least once a day that aims at raising your inner
energy and sense of well-being (see also Keeping Your Energy
High).

These are merely some suggestions … there are myriad other ways you
can discover to make new choices. But know this: making new choices
will bring you towards a different path in your life. Furthermore, if by
making those choices you intend to bring yourself to a place where you
can see the glorious flowering growth amidst the dust and dirt, your life
will change, your perspective about everything in your life will change,
and the changes in you will bring about a vibration to a much greater tune
tune that includes the word freedom in its title.
What Are Your Addictions?
I can just hear you saying: I don’t have any addictions. I don’t drink, I
don’t smoke, I don’t snort cocaine, and I certainly don’t shoot heroin. I
don’t have any eating disorders and I don’t gamble.
Good. Glad to hear that.
Addictions Go Down Many Strange Byways
• How about work? Have you ever had your partner complain that
you spend too much time there?
• How about shopping? Did you ever cringe when the credit card
bills came in at the end of the month and you realized that once
again you had spent far more money than you have?
• Now how about judging other people? You do that more than just a
bit? Like quite often? So that’s an addiction. Judging other people
is something we can get addicted to. If you try to stop you will
notice that it is almost as hard to do as saying good-bye to your
cigarettes.
• Then there’s criticizing others.
• And stereotyping others.
• And being a fitness buff way beyond just being healthy about your
body.
• Making money is a good one. There’s an addiction that masks as
something totally different … perhaps even being responsible …
• Socializing to the point of not wanting (or being able) to be alone.
• Being a news junkie.
• Remaining young … better said: wanting to remain young. So the
addiction is going after whatever it is you believe will keep you
young: creams, clothes, injections, surgery, retreats, sports, etc.
None of these things by themselves are wrong, it’s the desperate
and continued and addictive search to remain young that keeps
you from your life. (see also these posts on my blog about this
topic)
• Complaining? (You might like to listen to my radio show about the
subject … note that this particular audio clip will be up about the
second week of June)
• Feeling blue … now how’s that for an addiction?
• Feeling like you are a victim.
• Not letting go of old wounds. (Check out Caroline Myss’
Woundology and my blog article about it Woundology).
• How about being addicted to another human being? Can’t be
without them? Need their presence? Feel like something is terribly
wrong when they are not totally happy with you? This generally
means someone we think we are in love with, but it could also be a
child or a friend or anyone…stalkers of celebrities are an extreme
example of this type of addiction. (See also my July 2006
Newsletter: I Need You…I Need You Not)
• Blaming others. Uff … that’s one to write home about. You are
allowed to get off scot free, as long as you have someone to
blame. And as long as you do, you don’t really live your own life.
(See also my November 2007 Newsletter: Grow in Richness: Stop
the Blaming).
• Living at any time other than the now; always moving into the past
or the future in your thoughts (See also my January 2006
Newsletter: Living in the Now: Use it To Enrich Your Life and my
May 2008 Newsletter: Where Are You Now?)
• Addicted to hanging on to bad feelings
• Being addicted to gossiping.
• Social power. Being addicted to someone else’s social power.
Being in the reflection of their sun. Rubbing shoulders with them,
their social contacts, and the remainder of their entourage.
• Not forgiving. (See also these posts on my blog about this topic)
• Excusing others for their bad behavior. Not calling the shots when
you should. Having unhealthy boundaries (see also my October
2007 newsletter: Finding it Hard to Love Yourself? Check Out Your
Boundaries and my July 2007 Newsletter: Emotional Unavailability:
An Introduction).
Not Me. No. Definitely Not Me!
No, no, you say to me. Those things you’ve been writing about in this
article are not addictions. Now look here … if I judge or criticize another
person, I have a good reason.
 Look at those racists in that African country.
 Or look at the lack of humanitarianism in the members of the
regime of Myanmar after the cyclone hit.
 Or look at my boss … he is so unethical … he simply takes all the
credit for work we’ve all done as a team
 And what about my daughter? She’s nuts … taking drugs and
going out with those tattooed guys that wear earrings
 And speaking of earrings … what about those teenage girls that
get a diamond inserted into their belly button?
 And don’t get me started on those women that let themselves go
after they hit menopause
 And the pastor at my church! He has such an ego. All he wants to
do is hear himself speak, so his sermons are far too long, And so
boring.
 So you can see I have very good reasons to judge others … I
certainly don’t do any of that stuff!
Right. I’m sure you don’t. But you judge others for doing those things. And
furthermore, you don’t seem to be able to stop doing so. All I’m trying to
point out to you is that you have an addiction to judging other people.
Ok, you say, maybe you’re right. Since I have read what you wrote, I
actually tried to stop judging or criticizing people – even if it was just in my
mind, and I realized that it would be quite hard to do.
So what?? you ask.
Here’s what…
Becoming What You Truly Can Be
As long as you are addicted – to anything – you will not be able to
become what you truly can become. You will be a splintered personality,
as Gary Zukav called it in The Seat of the Soul. And the reason is
because as long as you have addictions – of any kind – you are using the
addictions to live your life for you. You use them to cope. You use them to
cover up any difficult feelings. You use them to soothe yourself. You use
them, in other words, to live your life for you, because without them, you
are not able to. See also Making Choices: Taking Responsibility For Our
Lives from my February 2006 Newsletter)
There is some analogy here to Eckhart Tolle’s pain body, or Chris
Griscom’s emotional body, insomuch as they speak of the pull, the
attraction, the seductive lure of that part of our life that causes us pain,
because we know that place so well.
Your Addictions Live Your Life for You
Your addictions live your life for you because they make choices for you.
Here are some examples:
• You send a letter or email via your assistant. Something is written
incorrectly and you don’t catch it. It means a big loss to your
bottom line. You rage at your assistant for his carelessness. By
being addicted to blaming, your choice is to not take responsibility
for your own part in the mess (the buck stops with you). Hence
you have no insights about yourself and do nothing differently. And
nothing changes.
• Your partner is not pleased with the fact that you have an opinion
that does not coincide with hers. She gives you the silent
treatment for a week. You suffer abjectly. The pain is horrendous.
You don’t know what to do to make your partner be nice to you
again. Finally you apologize, even though you know you did
nothing wrong, and a while later, life is good again. By hanging on
to your addiction to feeling bad, your choice is to not take
responsibility for your own part in the mess (your unhealthy
boundaries). Hence you have no insights about yourself and do
nothing differently. And nothing changes.
• You wake up on the weekend you were planning to drive to the
country for some down time. The weather has turned overnight
and it’s raining and dark out. You phone a friend and begin to
complain about the unfairness of life and you complain about the
fact that on those rare occasions when you decide to take a few
days for yourself, something always goes wrong. Then you
 complain about the fact that on top of everything else, your hot
water heater broke down and you can’t have a hot shower. By
hanging on to your addiction to complaining, your choice is to not
take responsibility for your own part in the mess (your attitude).
Hence you have no insights about yourself and do nothing
differently. And nothing changes.
There is an excellent section on this whole topic of addictions by Caroline
Myss on her CD set called Advanced Energy Anatomy.
How Can it Change?
This is not rocket science. If you’ve been following these articles I send
out every month, you’ll know at least one or two of the steps: Become
aware of your addiction/s. Make the choice to make different choices
each time you become conscious of falling back into your addiction/s. In
other words, you make the choice to become responsible for all of you.
Becoming responsible for all of you literally means owning all of what you
think, feel, say, and do. Owning it, means you deal with it as you think,
feel, say, or do it, rather than using an addiction to deal with it.
Let me say that again: Owning it, means you deal with it as you think,
feel, say, or do it, rather than using an addiction to deal with it.
By applying some will power to this process, you will become stronger
and stronger in this department, and then you will do it automatically
because the addiction will no longer be controlling your choices. And then
you are on the road to self responsibility and above all, inner freedom.
Do You Like the Person You Are Alone With?
Funny question, isn't it? Do you like the person you are alone with? If you
are alone, there is no one with you ... other than yourself. So what about
it? Do you like the person you are alone with? Do you like yourself? Enjoy
spending time with yourself? Look forward to being alone with yourself?
Consider yourself good company? Are you comfortable with yourself?
Would you choose yourself as a friend, if you were not you?
Or do you, as so many of my clients admit to me, shy away from
spending time with yourself? Find yourself looking for any activity at all in
order to avoid being alone with yourself? Literally run away from any
possibility of being alone with yourself? Some of my clients find
themselves experiencing extreme anxiety if they have to be on their own.
They will go shopping, they will eat, watch television, go to parties they
don't particularly enjoy, go out on dates with people they don't find very
interesting, drink, smoke, take drugs, have intercourse* (including
indiscriminate, even promiscuous sleeping around*), in short, do anything
they can to avoid the ultimate confrontation with the self.
Why does this happen? We could blame it in part on a society that places
a much higher value on outer, material, social, and professional
accomplishment than on the inner quest, where in reality both should be
in balance (see also my May 2007 Newsletter: Tending Your Inner
Garden). We could blame it in part on a society that does not further - or
help us - to take these looks at ourselves (see also The Unexamined
Life).
We could also blame it on a society – and a process of socialization
within our family, religious, and educational structures, that does not
generally give us appropriate tools to begin the process of self-love. Not
egotistical self-love, but healthy, good self-love. The kind that airline
personnel refer to, when they are giving the little talk at the beginning of
the flight and say that if there should be a drop in pressure, oxygen
masks will appear, and if you are traveling with small children, please put
yours on first, before attending to your child. You understand that one with
no problem, so perhaps you can take another look at the healthy kind of
self-love we all need in order to be of use to ourselves and others.
If we do not love the self, we will probably not look forward to spending
time with the self. But if we want to love the self, we must also come to
know it. In order to know it, we have to look at it. And looking at it means
that at first we may find much we don’t like. That’s ok. We can deal with
all of it bit by bit. But let’s begin by looking inside. Inside the self.
Amazingly, even psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, mental
health counselors, marriage therapists, family therapists, etc., are
generally not required to undergo analysis, or encouraged to delve deeply
within ... and as my three sons (well-versed in my opinions on the matter)
would say ... Hellooooo?. Hello indeed. How is it possible that those of us
who deal with the human psyche are not required to deal with our own?
That, however, must be the topic of another future article.
Because we do not find this encouragement to embark on the inner
quest, those of us who nevertheless do go ahead with it, find ourselves at
odds with the bulk of society, if we are courageous enough to speak
about it. We are either not understood, we may be mocked, and we may
ultimately find ourselves ignored, or our friends may shake their heads
and say or think: well, that's just his/her thing.
But what can the person who has not spent time with him or herself do to
make this process easier? How can they walk along the path that will lead
them into themselves, rather than consistently looking for something
external to fill the unexplored void? We could recommend meditation,
solitary walks, and so on, but I find that such practices are often too much
for the novice, as they are then thrown into themselves to an
overwhelming degree, much as someone used to a regular Western diet
and who wishes to eat in a more healthy fashion, may find that going raw
(eating only raw foods) is too much. (In a side note, I might add, I have
gone totally raw from a regular Western diet over the past month after
much reflection and reading about the subject over a number of years ...
since the 70's, and find the initial effects of this raw diet - fruits,
vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts - on my body and mind and state of
being, as well as on my energy level and quality of sleep, highly
illuminating ... more of this in a future post on my blog).
Here are some transition suggestions:
• use audio CD's or tapes to spend some time on your own, but
initially accompanied by someone (the motivational or inspirational
speaker) who fills your mind with thoughts you might not normally
 get into on your own (see also my September 2007 Newsletter:
Nurture Yourself to Happiness and Success as well as posts on my
blog pertaining to energy)
• start the daily practice of journaling: write down your thoughts
during a period of five minutes to begin with and see where it takes
you
• and if you are already journaling, do a gratitude journal as well.
Just jot down five things every day you are grateful for...and
remember...things can be something ranging from a material thing,
to something about your looks, to a sea gull you have just spied, to
the sound of the wind through the trees, to your own particular gifts
and talents, etc. Being grateful brings us closer to ourselves. We
become more humble in view of the greatness that surrounds us.
And so we come closer to ourselves as well. (See also these
previous posts on gratitude).
• start recording your dreams (see previous dream posts or listen to
my audio clips on dreams) and attempt to interpret them, as this
will lead you into the psyche
• if you enjoy reading, start picking up some books that don't exist
merely to entertain, but also to serve as an aid with which you can
get to know yourself better (there are numerous books in my
extensive Recommended Books Section, others are to be found in
the December 2006 and 2007 Newsletters with the yearly list
culled from the books I recommend each month, in each
respectively, and other book suggestions can be found on my blog)
• once you've done some of this, you may actually find yourself
desirous of trying that solitary walk (I power walk one hour every
day on the beach here in southern Spain, which affords me a
superb opportunity each and every day to commune with myself,
or be internally creative, or practice open-eyed meditation, or be
grateful for this blissful part of my day, etc.).
Getting to know the self, becoming enamored of the self, finding the
beloved within, is one of the most liberating things you can decide to do
for yourself. All it takes is some curiosity (how can you not be curious
about yourself??) and desire, and above all, the first step.
Claiming Responsibility for the Self
As children, our parents often admonished us: be responsible! Take
responsibility for what you do. And we took it to mean that if we had
chores or homework to do, then we needed to be responsible about
completing those tasks, and not dawdle, or worse, procrastinate so much
that in the end they never got done, and we wound up with real
emergencies on our hands.
When he was still quite young, I used to say to one of my sons (I found
the saying in some article): your lack of planning does not constitute my
emergency when he would come to me in the 11th hour with a paper that
had not been written, or a project that had not been properly planned.
But this is not what claiming responsibility for the self is really all about.
Implementing a Different Type of Responsibility
One thing is to be responsible out there in the world, as described above,
and another thing is to claim responsibility for the self. Both types of
responsibility form part of responsible behavior, but the latter is much less
understood, and even less implemented in an individual's life. We pay
little attention to it because the world at large gives it little merit, it is not
talked about as something valuable to achieve, such as having an
outstanding academic record, getting a prestigious position in an
important firm, or becoming financially successful in the world.
Being Responsible for the Inner You
To claim responsibility for the self literally means to decide to be
responsible for all that goes on within the self. Not, let me hasten to add,
for all that happens to the self. You can not control that (also see You
Don't Have to Blame Anybody). If you live in a police state and are
arbitrarily arrested, or if you live in an area often devastated by
hurricanes, or if you live in a third-world country with raging hunger and
poverty, or if you are of the wrong ethnic or religious origin (according to
the powers-that-be) and are subject to harassment or worse, it is clear
that you are unable to claim responsibility for that manner of events.
Claiming Responsibility for Your Reactions
But you can - without the slightest doubt - claim responsibility for the way
in which you react to all of that, and therefore, you can claim
responsibility for the way you feel about it all (also see No One Can
Control Your Emotions), for the state of your being in the midst of such
havoc and chaos, and therefore, in a nutshell, you have control of your
life. As long as you are in control of what goes on inside of you, what
happens on the outside carries much less weight. Imagine the potential
freedom this would give you. Imagine a world where you are free to
choose how you feel, think, and react. Imagine a world where you inner
well-being lies in your own hands.
Does Your External World Control You?
We can take this into the arena of much more normal external events and
experiences and understand how we can begin to take control of much of
that which ails and plagues us by claiming responsibility for the self.
• your boss just passed you over for a promotion
• the bank declined your request for a loan
• the person you love just walked out on you
• the girl you asked out for a first date said she already has a
boyfriend
• it rained the entire week you spent in Bali
• seven publishers rejected your manuscript
• your college application was put on waitlist
• one of your best clients moved over to the competition
• you had a reconciliatory dinner with your partner and the two of
you wound up having a fight
In each of these examples something external to the self causes
frustration, heartbreak, pain, annoyance, anger, or any number of other
unhelpful emotions. And so we explain our negative emotions to
ourselves by blaming them on the event or the person (also see The
Greatest Quality in Life). Obviously we feel that way because of what
happened.
Choosing to be in Control of Your Well-Being
If that is explanation enough for you, then you are willing to give over
control of your state of well being to an event or another person. It is
tantamount to saying that you are not in control of your state of well
being. You might say: How can I be when these things happen to me?
The way I feel is totally dependent on what just happened. Anybody
would feel that way under those circumstances. Nevertheless, there is
another way of looking at it … if only you will try. You can be in control of
your state of well being by deciding to be. It's as simple as that.
Make the decision that when things happen that would normally upset
you, you will, in future, look at all the possibilities, all the alternatives of
reaction at your disposal. Of all of these alternatives, one of them is
always going to be:
• I can choose not to get upset
• I can choose to remain calm
• I can choose to keep my cool
• I can choose to remain in a good mood
• I can choose to refuse to let this person or event bother me
• I can choose to look at this as a learning situation and take
something positive from it in order to advance to the next place in
my life
• I can choose to grow from this
• I can choose not to worry (because worrying never solved anything
at all)
• I can choose to smile
• I can choose to walk away from this situation
• I can choose to let this person be the way they are, realizing that
their way of thinking, or their behavior says nothing at all about me
• I can choose to believe in my own value as a wonderful human
being
• I can choose to laugh
• I can choose to shake hands
The examples of the choices you can offer yourself are endless, but if you
make certain that your choices are always roads that take you to a good
state of being, that enhance your well-being, and that serve you in some
way, you are truly taking control, and claiming responsibility for the self.
The goal of all of this is … contrary to what many of us learned in our
early years … that we must first take care of ourselves. (See also The
Absolutely Best Way of Giving to Others ).This is not selfishness. This is
not egotistical behavior. This is recognizing that the better my inner state
of well-being is, the higher my energetic frequency is (when you are
happy your energetic frequency is high, when you are depressed or
distressed, it is very low), and therefore the greater the possibilities are
that I will have a positive impact on my world. The ripple effect of my very
state of being – if it is energetically high - will be good for others, and in
my own small way, I will be helping to change the world in a positive way.
Claiming responsibility for the self then becomes not only something that
is good for me, but it is good for the world. Claiming responsibility for the
self brings me inner freedom, and helps to bring it to the world by the
ripple effect of my example.
Claiming responsibility for the self is one of the biggest and most
important steps you can take to make your life and your personal world
the best it can possibly be.
Related Articles:
• Looking In All the Right Places
• Are You in Alignment With Who You Really Are?
• Are You Living the Life You Want to Live?
• Cellular Responsibility: Getting Your Power Back
• Controlling Ourselves, Our Lives, and the People in Them
• Create a New Life: One Intention at a Time
• Do You Like the Person You Are Alone With?
• Finding it Hard to Love Yourself? Check Out Your Boundaries
• Gratitude, Choice, and the “Why Did This Happen to Me?
Syndrome
• Grow in Richness: Stop the Blaming
• Happiness: Has it Become a Science or is it a Question of Luck?
• How Your Thoughts Change Your Body
• Intentional Focus: Your Happiness, Your Success, & the Law of
Attraction
• Living in the Now: Use it to Enrich Your Life
• Making Choices: Taking Responsibility for our Lives
• Nurture Yourself to Happiness and Success
• Tending Your Inner Garden
• The Puritan Work Ethic, Wu-Wei, and is Life Really Meant to be a
Struggle?
Looking in all the Right Places
• Where do you look when something goes wrong?
• What do you focus on when you can't seem to get ahead?
• Which thoughts run through your head when you've just bungled
something?
• Which feelings course through you when your world turns upside-
down?
• What reactions does your body give you when you just know it
can’t get any worse?
The answers to all of those questions tell you a great deal about the
current quality (or lack of quality) of your life. (Also see How About
Changing?)
Looking in all the right places literally means always looking for
something to appreciate, love, or enjoy, something to be grateful for,
looking for something that can help you grow more, looking for something
that can teach you to progress more productively, to be more you, and to
consistently feel better about yourself - no matter where you are currently
at, and no matter what has actually happened. (you might like to take the
time to listen to two of my audio clips on my website’s Radio Page: Shoes
& Perspective in the Awareness Section, and When Life Threatens to
Overwhelm in the Emotions Section).
That means that when the fan is full with what hit it, you are focusing on
something to appreciate in this situation, something that will create
learning in you, in other words, you are looking to find something in any
and all situations life brings you to that makes you capable of some
manner of appreciation.
Imagine just for a moment that you get to choose the things that happen
to you. Obviously you would only choose good stuff. But let's imagine for
a moment that you have a child in first grade. The good stuff would be
recess time, and play activities. The not so good stuff might be learning
how to read and write. Or math. You get the picture. For the child to
progress - although the child might not willingly choose it - he needs to go
through some stages of progressive learning in order to become the
competent, effective, and proactive adult that you are hoping he will
indeed become.
Back to you. If you got to choose everything that happens to you, you
might only choose the good stuff. But let's say there's a part of you that is
wiser (as you are the - I hope - wiser adult parent to your hypothetical
child in first grade). This part of you that is wiser knows that in order for
you to grow on levels that have nothing to do with reading, writing, and
arithmetic, you will need to choose a number of situations in your life that
will cause you to progress in those directions.
So if you got to choose, that wiser and older part of you would be
choosing experiences that might not - at first glance - look like a lot of fun
and games. Maybe you have to live in an orphanage as a young child
(like Wayne Dyer), maybe you get sexually abused (like Louise Hay),
maybe you are diagnosed with cancer (like Kylie Minogue), maybe you
become a quadriplegic after falling off your horse (like Christopher Reeve,
the actor who played Superman), maybe you are repudiated by the
husband you love because you are unable to bear a male child (like
Soraya of Iran, first wife of the late Shah), maybe you develop Lou
Gehrig's disease (like the world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking),
maybe your mother is assassinated (like Benazir Bhutto's son) maybe
you get jailed for 28 years for expressing your political opinions (like
Nelson Mandela), maybe you get sent to Auschwitz , the Nazi
extermination and work camp, during the Holocaust, and your entire
family gets gassed while you are in there (like psychiatrist and author
Viktor Frankl), maybe your mother or partner seems to spend all their
time pushing your buttons (also listen to this audio clip: Who’s Pushing
Your Buttons? from my newly-hatched radio show) maybe your husband
is decapitated in a high-speed boating accident (like Princess Caroline of
Monaco's second husband) maybe you have to battle drug addiction (like
actor Robert Downey Jr.), or alcoholism (like British actor Richard Burton,
twice married to Liz Taylor), or maybe your young son falls 53 floors from
a Manhattan skyscraper (like Eric Clapton's son Conor), or maybe you
lose your sister to suicide (like Mariel Hemingway lost her sister
Margaux). The list could go on and on. I've deliberately chosen famous
names so you relate more readily. You probably know of most of these
people, can picture them, and watched some of them via the international
media as they were going through their particular experience.
So if you could choose what happens to you, and hypothetically, if you
choose one of the above examples (never in my right mind, I can hear
you say ... but just bear with me for a moment here), wouldn't you have
chosen that specific experience in order to gain something from it?
Again, I can hear you saying: How could I gain something from such an
awful situation? Do you remember the American couple, Maggie and Reg
Green, some years ago whose young son Nicholas was shot in Italy while
the family was on vacation there? His parents subsequently decided to
donate Nicholas’ organs and tissues to seven Italians to enable others to
live and to have a future that Nicholas was denied. Their gain was to see
that their young son's life was not truncated in vain. Their gain was to see
the joy in the lives of seven families who were able to benefit from their
tragedy. Their gain was to look beyond the merely obvious, close-down,
and personal to a broader situation where we are truly all one (click here
for more articles about the subject of our one-ness).
So what did they do to get there? One very important element was to
focus on the right things, to look in all the right places. And part of that is:
what can I do with this? How can I learn from this? How can I use this to
make me a bigger, better person? How can this help me grow?
Do you doubt that most of the people I mentioned earlier did that?
Remember Christopher Reeve's crusade for stem cell research? Or look
at Stephen Hawking’s zest for life and scientific discovery. Or Mandela's
goal to end Apartheid. Yes, it's true, not all were able to use their
experience in the way I'm describing. No one says it's easy. All I'm
suggesting is that if you give this a try, and begin to look in all the right
places, you will make your life better no matter what the external
circumstances are. And that – once again – leads to inner peace and
freedom.