Your self image surrounds you like a transparent cocoon.  You can’t see it, but you sure can see what it does to you.  All you have to do is look at your life.

The main problem with your self image is that it can ‘lock you into place’, and keep you in misery or depression or anxiety or self pity or anything, for that matter.  We all need a sense of identity, but when the identity we currently have drags us down, then it becomes a problem.

In a perfect world, your self image would be fluid and flexible – every-shifting and ever-changing throughout the day and throughout your life. A beautiful flowing of energy which reminds me of the aurora borealis.

But we’re not in a perfect world, are we?  Rather than an image that supports us and keeps us strong, and makes it so easy to be happy and successful, instead we’re much more likely to have an image that holds us back.

A positive image will be dynamic; flowing; uplifting.  A negative image, however, will be static; deadening; restricting…  where you think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings day in and day out.  And basically, that’s the self-test you can take to determine if your image is positive and alive, or negative and restrictive.

Do you find yourself thinking the same old thoughts today that you did yesterday, last week, last year?  Are the feelings you feel pretty much the same ones you felt yesterday?  Where nothing seems to change…?

That’s the symptom of a negative self image.  Where you get stuck in a rut.  And not only are you stuck, but even worse, you see yourself being stuck tomorrow.  The future holds no allure.  How can it when nothing changes?

You see, the self image is an invisible ‘energy field’ made up of our thoughts and feelings.  These thoughts and feelings form patterns, and these patterns make up the resonance called our self image.

And once the resonance is in place, it limits our very thoughts and feelings.  It locks us into thinking and feeling the same way, over and over.

To understand more of the self image, let’s look closer at what the word ‘resonance’ means.

1.  Everything radiates some sort of frequency of vibration that emanates outside of itself as a wave function. In other words, everything puts off waves of energy.

2.  When any two objects or energies come together, their vibrations (their waves of energy) overlap.

3.  As these waves overlap, some of them cancel each other out.  Some waves are neutralized.  Some are amplified.  And some become more potent.

4.  All of this interaction creates an interference pattern.

5.  Sooner or later, this interference pattern creates a standing wave of energy.

6.  This standing wave of energy is called a resonance.

7.  Out of this resonance comes ‘reality’.

Resonance is different from the ingredients that make it up.  Just like a chocolate cake is different from the sugar and flour and eggs and cocoa that go into it.

Resonance is far more powerful than the ingredients which make it up.

And that’s what makes all the difference in the world.  The resonance of your self image holds greater power than your individual thoughts and feelings.  That’s why it’s so hard to change your thoughts and your feelings.  Or your depression.  Or your shame. Or whatever you may be dealing with.

If I have the image of a person in pain… then I will live a life of pain.

My image determines what will happen in my life.  It determines what is even possible.  It’s like a bouncer standing at the doorway of the bar; letting in some people, keeping others out.  Some realities are possible for me; and others aren’t.  It all depends on my self image.

And what is my self image?  All my thoughts and all my feelings, which have come together to form patterns.  And out of these patterns, a resonance has formed.  A resonance called ‘my self image’.

Will I be happy?

Will I be successful?

Will I find and marry the man of my dreams?

It all depends on my self image.

Now yes, my subconscious beliefs are important.  All kinds of stuff in the subconscious are important.  After all, the energy that keeps me alive flows through my subconscious. But before that energy and those beliefs can even get to me, it has to pass through my self image.

My self image stands at the boundary between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

It’s the gatekeeper to the energy that keeps me alive.  And this gatekeeper – this resonance of energy – is more powerful than the individual thoughts and feelings I have.  Because it’s the sum total of all my thoughts and feelings.

That’s why when you’re stuck in depression or self pity or some other form of misery, it’s so hard to think and feel new thoughts and feelings.  The resonance of all those previous thoughts and feelings is just too strong to overcome. Nothing changes, and you can’t even imagine things changing.

And that’s a very dangerous place to be.

Conversely, when you self image is alive and vibrant and positive, then it changes and stretches and grows and actually makes it easy for you to change.

Is change hard, or is change easy?

Well, partly it depends on your beliefs, yes.  But it very much depends on your self image.  Even when you believe change is easy, your self image can choke off the change that would otherwise come.

And that’s how the self image keeps you in pain.

So what do you do about it?  Assuming, of course, that you even want to change!  Because, let’s face it, many people don’t want to change.  They have every intention of riding out this life in pain.

“Yeah, life sucks.  But I’m used to it.  Why rock the boat?”

That attitude, by the way, is much more common than you might suspect.  In fact, I’d say there’s a little bit of that attitude in each of us.  If we’re willing to dig deep into ourselves, that is…

But here’s the thing:  We didn’t come into this life to be complacent in our pain.  That complacency, that ‘giving up’, that ‘learned helplessness’ which keeps us stuck can be overcome.  I’m telling you – I know what it’s like to be complacent in my pain.

I know what it’s like to figure I’ll just ‘ride out’ this life – coast through till the end – and not try.  To fail at life, in other words.  I know what it’s like to plan to fail at life.  I know what it’s like to give up.  And mean it.  Fortunately, I had some unseen friends who did not give up on me.

I made it over the hump of pain.  And if I can do it…

Listen, there’s going to come a point when you’ll be looking back over this lifetime.

“How did I do?”

And what do you think the criteria of evaluation will be?

I just don’t want to be like the tiger who gets one little claw stuck and rather than jerks himself free, instead he lies down and gives up.  Especially when the barrier can be so easily overcome.  I don’t want to be stopped by a paper-thin fear of the unknown and the uncomfortable.  I didn’t come here to be a coward.  I don’t think you did either.

Changing your self image does not have to be hard or difficult or painful.  Or even uncomfortable, for that matter.  And when you change your self image, you change.  Your life changes.  Your world changes.  Always.  It has to.  It has no choice.

It might be a small change; it might be a big change.  But change will happen.

When I look back to the time when I was imprisoned in my own shame… and I actually thought it was okay to live like that… it’s mind-boggling to think I put up with so much misery when I could have ended it at any time.  It hurts to think about how much I put up with when I didn’t have to.

You can start changing your self image today; right now.  You can work with it directly, in a brand new meditation I just recorded specifically on changing your self image.  In the meditation, you work with your image incrementally.  Step by step.  One small piece at a time.  That way it’s not scary or uncomfortable.

When you start today, not only do you get the meditation on how to change your self image, you also get every other product I’ve ever come up with.

They’re all waiting for you right now in the new membership site I’ve recently put together.  You can get all the details here -

http://www.people-healer.com

Just click on the link above to get started right away.

Now, is this the only way to change your self image?  No, of course not.  It’s just the best way I know of.

You can also work on your self image indirectly.  You can always work on processing out your thoughts and feelings on paper.  You can always ask for help at night, before you drift off to sleep.  You can always practice thinking new thoughts, and feeling new feelings.

You can always stretch beyond what you currently believe is possible.

You can always seek to see the bigger picture.

You can always imagine more.

The question is – are you?

Get all my products – including the brand new meditation that shows you how to change your self image gently and effectively, to help lift you out of your current round of resistance, by clicking here – http://www.people-healer.com

All for one ridiculously low price.

Remember, your self image can lock you in place and keep you in pain.  It can keep you in a rut that can last a lifetime.   But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Everything can change.  Nothing has to stay the same.  You can feel what freedom really feels like.

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Your Self Image is a post from: Emotional Times

As I write these words, 2012 has just begun.  Many months ago, I wrote that 2011 will be an intense year.  Maybe the most intense year ever. That’s what I was feeling, anyway.

And for me it was intense.  Very intense.  But in a good way.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but at the first of every month, I pick up my phone and make a call to someone I would describe as a ‘friend’ or a ‘mentor’.  It’s very similar to a coach, but not exactly.  I pay 85 bucks for the hour, and it feels like I’m stealing.

I’ve been making these monthly calls since 2003, so obviously I get something out of our conversations, or else I wouldn’t keep doing it.

Anyway, I usually spend part of our time together looking back over the previous month.  That’s how I know – not only has 2011 been the best year of my life (by far!) but it seems every single month of last year was better than the month before.

And in this article, I want to mention the two essential ingredients that can help make 2012 the best year of your life, as well.

This last December has been the most wonderful month ever.  Which is really saying something, since November was so powerful also.  And how do I evaluate each month?

By how I feel.

That’s it.  Everything else is a distant second.  Now, I sometimes say spirituality is the most important thing in my life, but I don’t – or can’t – distinguish between my feelings and my spirituality.  They’re so intertwined that they seem inseparable.  To me, at least.

A life filled with wonder is a spiritual life.  That’s how I see it.

I’ve used the intensity of this last year – I’ve channeled it – into becoming more and more aware of the emotional wellspring that bubbles up inside me.  It might sound simple, almost Pollyanna, but I can assure you there’s quite a complexity to it.

Your emotional wellspring is life itself.

You’re alive because of this flow of energy that comes to you (from your Creator, I suppose).  It flows from somewhere unknown, and can light you up like a light bulb.  Every month, as I chronicle my life, I realize this flow of energy is becoming less and less impeded by my own nonsense.

You may recall, months ago I said there were two things you needed to watch out for in the coming year, with all it’s intensity.  And I believe these two ingredients are even more true for 2012.  They are:

1. The urge to control.

2. The urge to tell yourself stories rather than just open up and feel your feelings.

Control.  I’m not talking about the clumsy, almost humorous attempts of one person trying to control another.  Those are so obvious you can see them a mile away, if your eyes are open.  And you can fend them off simply by putting them up on the table and into the light of day, if you choose.  They melt pretty quick.

No, I’m talking about how you attempt to control yourself.

“I’ve got to be in control of the situation.  I’ve got to be in control of my life.”

Who says?  Where is it written that you have to be in control?

I know, I know…  it’s obvious, isn’t it?  If you’re not in control, well… you’ll be out of control.  Then something bad will happen.  People will look down on you.  They’ll talk about you behind your back.  Heck, you might even go out and step in front of a bus.

But what is control, really?

On the surface, control is an attempt to make love safe.  And everybody wants to make love safe. Nothing wrong with that.  The problem is, control doesn’t work.  You can’t control life.  Not really.  Not for long.

But we think control means we’re being responsible citizens of the earth.  It’s our duty and obligation to control ourselves.  It makes us good people.  It makes us worthy.  It makes us mature, responsible, adults.

Or so the energy of chauvinism says, anyway.  Because control is all about chauvinism and domination.  And like it or not, we live in a world of chauvinism and domination.

I’m doing all I can to change it, but that’s where we are right now.  And that’s why control seems to make so much sense.

But I would say control is the exact opposite of responsibility.  It’s the exact opposite of reality creation.  It’s the exact opposite of what will help you live a wonder-filled life.  Control stifles creativity.  It chokes love.  It narrows your possibilities.  Among many other attributes…

The more we try to control ourselves, the more and more painful it’s going to get.

See, we’ve got this idea that if we’re not in control, that means we’re going to go around screaming like a chicken with its head cut off.  Completely out of control.  Which means we’ll surely meet our demise by running into that city bus barreling down the highway.

The idea of being out of control usually means we’ll be a victim of our emotions – like a puppet on a string.  We’ll flail around like we’re possessed by some sort of demon.  Even worse, other people will lose all respect for us.  They’ll use us.  They’ll punk us.  They’ll laugh at us.

And who wants all that?

Not me.  I’m smart.  Sophisticated.  I’m not asleep.  It’s everyone else in the world.  They’re the sheep.  Not me.  I know what’s going on.

But here’s the problem:

Chaos is increasing.  Changes are afoot.  Big changes.  The dog is shaking itself.  And we’re just fleas on its back.

The changes, and the chaos, are bigger than we are.  We can’t control what’s happening.  To even try is like putting your head in the sand.  And when your head is in the sand, your posterior is exposed.

Control is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  It’s just not going to work.  It’s counterproductive and a waste of time

Now, in addition to control, there’s another faulty tool that’s going to create just as much pain in your life.  Namely, it’s the stories you tell yourself about what’s going on.

And first, let me say I’m not against stories.  Everybody loves stories, me included.  Stories and story telling are in our DNA.  Stories are important, and they have great impact in our lives.  Stories are powerful.

But the wonder of stories – that comes from their spellbinding powers – can also be used against us.  Not only by savvy marketers.  Not only by our governments and other structures of society such as the mainstream media…  But by ourselves.

We use the power of stories to hurt ourselves.  It’s like we hypnotize ourselves with the stories we tell ourselves inside our own heads.  And it’s not only stories about our feelings, either.  (That’s just the example I always pound on!)

The problem is we so often refuse to question our own assumptions.  Which opens the door to a life controlled by ego.  When you don’t question your own assumptions; when you refuse to even look at the stories you’re telling yourself all day long; it almost guarantees your ego will be running your life.

And that is a very dangerous place to be.  Because your ego may very well try to get you to run out in front of that bus.  Sometimes, literally.  And if you’re not in the habit of questioning your thoughts, then you just might go along with it.  No matter how self destructive it is.

The answer to this problem is so easy, it hurts to even think about it.

Start questioning your assumptions!

We’re always so cynical of others and their motives.  How about being a little cynical of the thoughts your own ego is putting into your head all day long?  The little voice that sits on your shoulder and always tells you how good you are, or how bad you are.  The little voice that’s always trying to make you feel separate from everybody else.  The little voice that’s always lying to you.

Now, a positive ego is a great ally.  It will enhance your life like you wouldn’t believe, until you experience it first hand.  But if you haven’t worked with your ego – to make it strong and powerful and positive – then most likely it’s weak and negative and destructive.  That’s just the way it works.

Because your ego, among its many other attributes, is a reflection of a weak and negative and destructive world in which we currently live.  Change your ego and you’ll be changing your world.  Seriously. Because reality consists of what we perceive, and when you have a healthy ego, you perceive things differently.

Your reality changes when your measuring and observing devices change.

Not just your perception of reality – but reality itself changes.

It all starts by questioning your assumptions.  In fact, a good argument could be made for the value of sitting down and writing out your biggest assumptions about your biggest problem.  What do I ‘know’ is true about this issue that keeps haunting me?  And be brutally honest with yourself.

Do some free-association writing about what you know to be true.  Don’t take the time to think about what you’re putting down on paper.  Just write without editing. No matter how silly, how uncomfortable, how painful it may be to think about.  No matter how much you should beat yourself up for even saying it, much less believing it…  just write it out.

Sometimes, just bringing the assumptions up on the dissecting table can be enough to end them.  Other times, the assumptions seem intractable, no matter how much logic and common sense you apply.  And the worst of all?  When you angrily refuse to even consider the fact that your facts may not really be facts at all.

But let’s look at the second scenario; when you’re holding an assumption as true, even though its burning your hands.

“I know I shouldn’t think this way, but I can’t help myself.”

While the jaded observer may see this as some sort of character defect, or a manipulative – if not coy – attempt to avoid responsibility, it may in fact be true.  You truly may not be able to help yourself.  At least not yet.

Here’s why:

You’re surrounded by a field of energy.  It’s composed of all your thoughts and all your feelings.  Or rather, it’s composed of your thinking patterns, and your feeling patterns.  See, we tend to think in the same way, and feel in the same way.  And over time, it forms patterns. These patterns can lock us into the thinking the same thoughts, and feeling the same feelings.

So if you’re happy, you tend to stay happy.  Conversely, if you’re depressed, then you tend to stay depressed.

This energy field of your thought and feeling patterns is called your self image.

Everybody has one.  Everyone who has thoughts and feelings, that is.  And there’s a good chance your self image may be keeping you locked into a life you really don’t want to live.

The good news is you can change your self image.  I recently recorded an audio meditation that shows you the easiest, most elegant way I know to change your image.  And when you change your image, your life changes.

When you change your image, your life changes.

It’s almost like a short cut, as much as I hate using that phrase.

I first started using this technique to help people with one of the most difficult of all issues to heal – shame.  But really, you could use it for anything.  That’s because you have many individual self images, as well as one overall self image.

This technique works best when you are dealing with one particular image at a time – such as losing weight, ending shame or depression or panic, finding a soul mate, or improving your financial standing.  Or any other issue, for that matter.

If there’s something you’d like to change about your life, this may be the way to do it.  Just work with your self image – making incremental changes each day.  That’s what this meditation guides you to do.

Your job is to decide what in particular you want to change.  Then, simply let the meditation do the rest.  You’ll be making small changes every day.  That way, it won’t be scary and you won’t feel the urge to slam on the brakes.  It’s the easiest way I know to make a change that lasts.  Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Then, maybe a year from now, you’ll look back, like I have, and say -

“This last year was the best year of my life.”

Here’s my offer:

It’s only $12.  And along with this meditation, you also get access to every single product I’ve ever produced, at no extra cost.  Twelve dollars gets you the best way I know to make permanent changes in any area of your life and it gets you all my other products.  About twenty in all.  The details are here -

http://www.join-the-fun.com/sitemem.html

One final note:

In the self image changing technique, you will be working with your future self and your higher self.  I don’t mention them by name in the meditation, but they will be there, behind the scenes, guiding you and directing you to the change you want to make.  If you do not want to work with your future self or your higher self, then do not listen to this meditation!

Just so we’re clear.

Oh, and I also wrote a transcript of the meditation, included at no extra charge.  (For those who need it.  You know who you are.)

Will 2012 be the best year of your life?  As always, the choice is up to you.

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Make 2012 Your Best Year Yet is a post from: Emotional Times

When you want to attract a soul mate, or create anything in your life, for that matter, then it will be natural for you to have a strong desire .  Duh.  Because if you didn’t have a strong desire, then you probably would not be making the effort to get it in the first place.

But all too often that desire turns to desperation and extreme longing.  Not because it has too, but because we start telling ourselves stories about what it means to not have what we want.

If I’m not getting what I want, it means I’m in pain…

It means I’m not good enough…

It means there’s something wrong with the world…

Or there’s something wrong with me.

And on and on it goes.

And thus, desire gets a bad rap and enlightened people tell you to not have any desires at all.  But it’s not the desire that hurts.  It’s the stories we attach to the desires.

When you want to attract a soul mate, it creates a longing.  That longing can be beautiful, in its own way, but it’s also painful.  Or it can be.  And most people find themselves stuck in this stage.

They want a soul mate, they tell themselves.  They really do.  But since it’s not happening, they tend to interpret that lack of a soul mate in rather harsh ways.  They attach all sorts of meanings to the lack.  Which may involve blame, self condemnation, pity, and various other energies that only make things worse.  These stories take a beautiful longing and turn it into a painful and ugly reality.

As if that were not bad enough, we also have plenty of stories about why we need to avoid the very loving relationship we seek.  Such as the stories from childhood about what love means, and about what relationships mean.

“Love means you’ll just get used and abused and then abandoned.  Love means the other person will get close to you and then they can hurt you.  Love means… something bad will happen to you.”

And these stories keep away the loving relationship.  They make sure you never find that soul mate.  Because if you do, you’ll end up getting hurt by this other person.  Or however the stories go…

The pain comes from being caught in the tug of war between conflicting stories.  On the one hand, I make up stories about how bad it is to not have a soul mate.  On the other hand, I make up stories about how bad it is to be in a relationship.

I’m caught in the middle.  My heart longs for love, and I want a loving relationship, but my early childhood programming tells me relationships are something to be avoided.  Because love equals pain and shame and whatever else I learned.

The key here is to understand that what you really want is not the other person, per se, but rather the feeling you will get when that other person is in your life.  It’s the feeling.  That’s what’s real.  That’s what your heart wants; to be filled with love.  To belong.  To feel safe in love.

The other person is just illusion.  (In the sense that everything we see in our world is illusion.)  We make the illusion real.  That’s part of what it means to be human.  We selectively pick and choose various aspects of the illusion we see around us, and make them real to us.  We get to choose what’s real and what’s not.

So yes, we can make a soul mate real, and out of that wonderful and beautiful relationship, our lives can be greatly enhanced.  The energy of the relationship itself can nurture us and fill our hearts with love and joy.

Unfortunately, we’ve been taught and conditioned to make the stories real instead of the love and joy of a relationship with a soul mate.  We’ve been almost forced to believe that pain and struggle and not getting what you want – that’s what’s real.

“Living a happy, joyful, loving existence?  HA!  You’re a chump to give that thought any energy at all!  You can wish for a soul mate.  You can long for one.  But deep down inside, you know it’ll never happen.  Not for you.”

You see?  That’s the kind of stuff we make real.  Not because it really is real.  But because that’s what we choose to make real, as a product of our conditioning here on earth.  But when you really let it in – you get to choose what to make real as part of what it means to be human – then you can change that conditioning.

They’re just stories that we’ve made real.

The pain – that comes from the heart’s longing for what its separate from – can be satiated.  One hundred percent.  And that comes from feeling the feelings of what it will be like to have the soul mate.

As opposed to thinking about the longing.  Which leads to pain.

As opposed to thinking about the separation.  Which also leads to pain.

Instead, focus on the feeling of satisfaction, of satiation; focus on the feeling of wonder and joy that comes from being in that relationship.  That’s the difference.  See?  Don’t focus on what you don’t have.  Instead, just go ahead and give yourself what you heart really longs for.  Which is feeling, not illusion.

Your heart, I dare say, does not really concern itself much with the outer world.  It is concerned with something more real.  True emotion.  True feeling.  Being filled with love.  Being filled with joy.  And many other feelings, for that matter.

Your heart may even want to feel a little bit of the longing.  But only to a certain point.  Because at first, it’s beautiful.  But it can easily cross a line to where it’s painful.

The purpose of the longing is to end the separation.  But because of the stories we tell ourselves, and because of the errant beliefs we picked up early in life, we end up with both longing and separation.  And that’s the pain.

If you will focus instead on fulfilling your heart’s desire for love, you can heal that pain.  And you do that by your imagination, by your will, by your choice.  You choose to feel what it would feel like to have that soul mate. Instead of what everyone else chooses to feel, which is the separation and the pain.

Separation is really an illusion.  It’s part of the illusion.  It’s not really real.  We make it real, and give it dimension and mattering and meaning, and thus it grows.  That’s where most people focus.

We create separation where none would otherwise exist.

I’m trying to offer a new way of looking at this, and a new way of responding to the current lack of a soul mate.  And you do that by working on feeling what’s real, rather than trying to just feel the stories of lack.

What do I mean?

You can feel the longing without telling yourself stories about what that longing means.  Just like you can feel the separation without telling yourself stories about what the separation means.

It’s not really the longing that creates the pain.  It’s the mental constructs we put up about our longing.  And it’s not really the separation that creates the pain.  If you could just feel the feeling of separation, without coming up with explanations about it, then you would most likely resolve that separation.  There’s not much realness to it, anyway.

If you feel the separation, you would most likely have less of it in your life.  But if you attach fairy tales to the feeling of separation, then it will last a lifetime.  If you attach baggage to the feeling of separation, it will stick around, and it will be painful.

But any time you feel – truly feel with your heart – then the feelings pass through you, and it raises your resonance.  Even if what you’re feeling at the time hurts.  Just by bringing it into your heart, and letting your heart work its magic, that in itself will change you.

The problem is, we’ve been so programmed to shut down our hearts, that most people couldn’t even sit still long enough to read these words.  Or else they’d just blow it off as some sort of airy fairy nonsense.  And they’ll never end their pain.

Hopefully, you’re not most people, and you’re able to listen to what I’m saying without squirming.

If you want to attract a soul mate; if you want to attract anything else; if you want to heal and grow and change in any way: the key is to feel with your heart instead of your head.  Feel the longing; without attaching stories to it.  Feel the separation; without added baggage about what that separation means.  And especially, feel what it will feel like to have the change you want in your life as if it’s already happened.

And will this do it?  Maybe.  At the very least it will clear the pathway so it becomes a lot more likely to manifest.  This lays the foundation.  It gives you a solid footing so you can see more clearly what else needs to be done.

Such as, perhaps, changing your self image from a person without a soul mate, to a person with a soul mate.

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Desire For A Soul Mate is a post from: Emotional Times

A reader asked me to write about the subconscious, and even though I’ve written a few articles in the past, I’d like to take a fresh stab at it. Look at it with fresh eyes.  I’ve often found when I revisit an old topic, I usually learn something new about myself.  This time is no exception.

If anything, I see more clearly than ever how important it is to work with my own subconscious mind.  And if you’ve found yourself stuck in a limiting habit or pattern, or trapped in an unpleasant situation, then this article is for you.

First, what is the subconscious, exactly?

Your subconscious could be described as a super computer that cares.  See it as your own powerful computer; an ally that really does want to help you succeed, but is limited in how it can help you.

The subconscious is part of your total consciousness.  We have many parts of our consciousness, most of which have no names or labels.  One of the smallest parts is the conscious self that we are aware of.  Everything we think and feel and imagine and believe and know about ourselves; in fact, everything we can remember and everything we can possible think of, is part of our conscious self.

Your conscious self – the you which you see in the mirror, the you that is reading these words, the you that thinks about the future and stuff, the you that knows everything you know, is the least conscious part of your consciousness.  But it’s the part of you that makes the choices!  That’s the great equalizer.

It knows the least; it’s less aware than any other part; yet it’s the one in charge.  It’s almost scary in a way.  To be given so much power and no instruction manual on how to use it.  Because “all I can see is this illusion I call reality”.  One could almost predict this would be a recipe for disaster.  Or at the very least, a life less lived.

Another limiting factor for the conscious mind is that it is further divided into various ‘lesser’ parts of us – such as an inner child, an ego, an inner martyr and numerous other aspects of our consciousness.  Which doesn’t have to be a problem, unless they’re the ones you’ve assigned to make the choices in your life.

Anyway, your subconscious contains much more awareness than you do.  It  can help you enormously when you learn how to consciously work with it.  And in fact…

I believe the destiny of all people on this planet is to learn to consciously work with their subconscious.  The problem is, most people see it as something to overcome, to get away from, to beat, to best, to conquer.  Or to trick.  I would suggest seeing it as an ally, a friend, a co-creator.  Something you work with, not something you need to dominate.  And definitely not something to avoid!  As if you even could…

Why Working With Your Subconscious Should Be One Of Your Highest Priorities

The subconscious compares to a supercomputer that records everything that has ever happened to you.  It’s always recording and storing every speck of data it can. The tape is always running in the background.  And out of the data from our first few years on earth, it forms programs that determine how we’ll live the rest of our lives.

Also, it seeks consistency above all else.  Everything has to fit in with previous data.  Let me give you an example.  I learned when I was about three years old that love equals shame.  So if you love somebody, they will shame you, and you are to shame them.  Because that’s what love is.

I carried that around with me for five decades – which probably explains my lack of successful long term relationships!  I just realized it the other day, in fact.   And if I had not stopped and taken the time to forgive myself, I’d be functioning out of that mindset for another five decades.  There’s no way it would have changed on its own.

That’s how the subconscious works.  I learned love equals shame, and my subconscious was bound to keep it that way.  No matter how much it hurt me.  Not because this part of me wanted to hurt me. Not at all. It had no choice. It was just giving me what it was programmed to.

That’s why it’s so vitally important to work with your subconscious; so you can change your limiting programs and live the life you want.  Here’s the big picture on how the subconscious influences our reality:

I believe we have a flow of energy coming into us all the time.  I call it the emotional wellspring.  Out of this raw material, we shape and form our world around us.  But before we even get a crack at it, this flow of energy first passes through our subconscious mind, which taints and colors the flow.

No matter what we say we want, our subconscious usually has a bigger say in the matter, because it changes the flow of energy coming into us, before that flow even gets to us.

Your emotional wellspring – the pure raw energy you use to create your life – is tainted by the beliefs and attitudes you picked up before you could even consciously think and decide and choose.

That’s pretty serious.  Now of course, you keep developing new beliefs and attitudes as you grow older, but for the most part they’re just extrapolations from early childhood…  unless you’ve consciously worked to heal and change those early childhood programs.

If you don’t work to heal and change those early programs, it can lock you into a lifetime of misery.  Or at least a lifetime of limitation.  You can never reach your full potential without working with those early programs.

And you can’t simply reason with your subconscious, any more than you can reason with a computer program.  Talking nice to your computer when its frozen up doesn’t work very well.  Telling it how badly you need to get back to work doesn’t help much.

Your subconscious functions like a computer.  Also, like a computer, your subconscious doesn’t make choices.  It merely follows instructions.  It’s always trying to give you what it thinks you want.  It follows the programming that’s been put into it.

Everything that comes to you – everything – must filter through the subconscious first.  (Then it’s delivered to you by the ego.)

So what to do about all this?

First, understand the programs you’ve already put into your subconscious.

You’ve got to know what programs are already in your subconscious, and then you’ve got to know how to change them to new programs that support you.  Why is this so important?

A subconscious program is a ‘field of play’ in which you live your life.  It sets the boundaries and makes the rules.  It says what can happen and what can not happen.

In other words, your life is contained within your subconscious programs.  If you really take the time to study it, you may find – as I have – that it’s a mind-blowing and life-altering experience.  It forces you to question your very existence.  It stirs up a lot of dust.

Luckily for me, I enjoy stirring up dust and having mind blowing experiences.  I figure that’s why I’m even here on this planet.  Plus, it’s a never-ending adventure.  I’ll never finish exploring my subconscious.  Not in this lifetime, anyway.

There’s a lot I don’t know about my subconscious.  And that’s okay.  But I do know enough to be able to work with it, and to be able to see the results show up in the world around me.

The basic technique of working directly with your subconscious goes like this:

1.  Find a quiet place when you can be alone and undisturbed.

2.  Relax your body and breathe deeply, then count from five to one, with the intention of entering an altered state at the count of one.

3. Imagine yourself to be in a safe place out in nature, or if you prefer, imagine yourself as you sit quietly in your room.

4. Find a hole in the ground, or a cave, or perhaps a hollow log which will take you into the earth.  Or if you’re imagining yourself in your room, then perhaps imagine yourself walking down some steps into a deep basement.

5. Find yourself in some sort of underground space.  This could be a computer room, a library, a warehouse, a maze, or it could even be a place in nature deep in the earth.

6. Begin to walk around and explore your surroundings.

7. Seek out the personification of your subconscious self.  It might look like you, or it might barely look humanoid.  You won’t know until you see it.

And once down there, you could talk to your subconscious self and seek to understand it more clearly.  You could develop a rapport with it, and ask it questions, even.  The possibilities are endless.

I’ve also recorded several meditations that can take you to your subconscious mind and then work with it in specific ways.  For example, I have one meditation that guides you to the Room Of Belief, which holds your Book Of Belief.  Then, you can easily change any limiting belief you wish.

Another meditation takes you to your subconscious so you can remove any blockages you may have.

A third meditation, which I call THE Creative Visualization Technique, takes you to a stage in your subconscious where you can show it what you would like to create.  It’s funny; I never talk about this one, but it’s become one of my best sellers, as people just seem to find it on the internet.

In addition to these meditations, I also have many other guided meditations that, while they don’t directly take you to your subconscious, they’re still designed to work with and reprogram your subconscious mind.  They work by speaking the language of your subconscious.

And I have to mention the forgiveness meditation, because going to and experiencing the magic of forgiveness also sends a very powerful signal to your subconscious that can produce amazing, sometime instantaneous, healing.

All together, I’ve got about twenty different guided meditations.  You can see the complete list here.  But now you don’t have to buy them separately.  You can get every one of them just by signing up for my new membership site, where I give you a brand new meditation every month.

Click here for more information on working with your subconscious – and a whole lot more.

Whether you take advantage of my offer or not, you will benefit greatly by working with your subconscious.   Here’s just one example of how it’s helped me:

I used to be scared to death of people.  I would freeze up in all sorts of ordinary situations.  Reprogramming my subconscious has pretty much made me fearless, at least as far as other people are concerned.

But it goes way beyond confidence.  I’ve expanded the boundaries of possibility in my life.  I’ve expanded what is possible. So much can happen now, that couldn’t happen before.

I wish I could tell you what that really means.

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Subconscious Mind is a post from: Emotional Times

About a month ago, a reader asked me to write about procrastination.  What I’ve discovered in the last 30 days has changed my life, and I hope it can help you as well.  See, I’ve stumbled across a hidden energy that’s virtually unknown in society today, and it seems to be as fundamental as the discovery of the emotional wellspring that exists inside each one of us.

Not to digress, but the emotional wellspring is the flow of energy that comes from your Creator and bubbles up inside of you.  When you let the energy flow, it allows for all sorts of wonderful changes in your life.  At the very least, it can end depression and anxiety and all that stuff that comes from an unhealthy relationship with your emotions. That’s what it did for me, anyway.

This new energy I’ve discovered has also started to flow into me.  It’s almost like I’ve broken some sort of hydraulic line and now this energy is just gushing into me and flowing into every area of my life.  And everything is different now.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Obviously, you can read about strategies for overcoming procrastination on the internet, such as the classic by Albert Ellis, and the more modern viewpoint from Steve Pavlina.  They’re both very good at going out and hunting down procrastination as if it were a wild animal.  Shooting it, then taking the carcass back to the laboratory and slicing it up to see what it was made of.

And there is some value in an autopsy.  What’s missing, of course, is the aliveness, the juiciness, the wonder of it.  In other words, the feelings.  The emotion.

So I want to take a slightly different viewpoint, rather than the behavior therapy techniques you can read elsewhere.  (They’re better at dissection than I am, anyway.)

In my thirty day journey into myself, I found I procrastinate quite a bit more than I imagined I did. And during that time, I wrote two previous articles, but ended up tossing them, because I kept feeling there was more to the story.  Thank God I kept going!  Because  I discovered an intoxicating energy just a few days ago that is already changing my life.  It makes procrastination laughable to me now.  So it’s not even an issue any more. (Hopefully!  We’ll see how it goes…)

Basically, I see procrastination as a diversionary tactic that helps you avoid responsibility.  I tell myself that what I’m ‘supposed’ to do is unpleasant.  So instead of feeling something I don’t want to feel (feeling unpleasant), I’ll substitute a different activity that is pleasant.

It’s a fascinating pattern, if you think about it.  And all too often, it becomes habituated.  Just like an addiction.  I can become addicted to the short term ‘hit’ I get by seeking some meaningless pleasant activity rather than the perceived unpleasant activity I should be doing.

If you typically put off paying your bills until they become overdue, that’s a good example of an habituated procrastination pattern.

Classic strategies for overcoming procrastination involve challenging your behaviors and your thinking and your faulty beliefs that lead you to rationalize putting off important actions or tasks. And the strategies might work, if you follow them.  But if you already live a prioritized, organized life, than you probably don’t procrastinate in the first place.

And there’s the rub.  Because to change procrastination, you will need to change yourself first.  But most people would rather be a procrastinator who doesn’t procrastinate. And that won’t work.  We might say we want to change, but when the rubber hits the road, we often retreat.  Therefore, let me first give you my…

Strategy For Overcoming Procrastination With The Least Amount Of Change Possible

When I put off something important that truly would be better done now, I tell myself that I will feel unpleasant if I do this task.  It will make me feel uncomfortable in some way.

In other words, I tell myself a story. Usually, the story is so automatic I don’t even recognize what I’m doing.  It’s just a knee jerk reaction.  I think of what I need to do.  It conjures unpleasant images in my mind.  I don’t want to manifest those images, so I distract myself by doing something I know is pleasant.

How do I change it?

Well, I know from experience that if I avoid feeling any feeling, that’s not good.  Because…

1. It’s a waste of time to avoid.
2. It takes my power.
3. It makes me think less of myself.
4. It sets me up for a more unpleasant experience in the future.
5. It sends the wrong message to my subconscious and myself.
6. It says I don’t create my own reality.
7. It says I’m separate.
8. It’s selfish.
9. It’s short-sighted.
10. And I’m not being wise and I’m not seeing the big picture when I avoid.

So, uh, then why do I still avoid?  Since it’s only slightly less harmful than smoking cigarettes?

Because I don’t have a sense of my true purpose in life?  I’m not in touch with my higher calling?  I’m not clear on why I’m here?  I’ve lost my vision?  Or, I tell myself that none of that matters?

Or maybe I feel safer staying small.  Or maybe I really do think I’m not good enough.  That I don’t matter.  I don’t deserve.  I’m not worthy. I have no impact anyway.

Whatever it is, it’s a lie.

I had to start with a big lie, a lie that speaks to me as a person. Then, I can tell myself the little lie that says it’s okay to put timely, important tasks off to a later date.  And the other little lie that says this thing I don’t want to do really is unpleasant.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

‘Unpleasant’ is not really an emotion.  It’s a story.  And when you try to substitute stories for your feelings, it will indeed become ‘unpleasant’.  Stories have their place.  Everybody loves a good story.  But not as a substitute for feeling your feelings!

Time and time again, when I actually start doing this ‘unpleasant’ task, I find it’s not unpleasant at all.  But that’s just me.  If I know I need to do something, I decide that I will feel as good as I possibly can while doing it.  Whether it’s something I want to do or not.

You see?  I tell myself a story about the task.  That’s how I overcome the procrastination around doing it. But instead of telling myself the story that it will feel bad, boring, frustrating, whatever… I tell myself that I will engage this to the best of my ability.  I will ‘get into it’.

It might be scraping old peeling paint off the side of a barn.  It might be cleaning the toilet.  It might be calling my cell phone carrier.  (The worst of all!)  But if I remember to keep the big picture in mind, I will approach the task with an open mind and a willingness to engage and a desire to feel whatever feelings come up.

I’ve never been able to feel ‘unpleasant’.  Frustrated, yes.  Uncomfortable, yes.  Angry, bored, irritated, exasperated, disgusted, yes.  But not unpleasant.

A funny thing happens when I start engaging a task that I’ve been putting off. Namely, I get into it.  Happens almost every time.  I choose to make it an adventure, and it usually does become an adventure.  Even scraping the old paint off the wall.

Why? Because I’ve spent the time to love and accept myself. I’ve spent the time to process out my feelings, so I know it will now be very hard for me to feel frustrated or exasperated.  I’m much more likely to be amused and entertained.

So what does it hinge on?  Bleeding off the unfelt and unresolved emotional energy that used to surround me like a blanket of barbed wire.  Processing out on paper all my aggravations and irritations and frustrations.

Not that I’ve got it all together.  I know I may still procrastinate some things.  I’m a work in progress, just like everybody else.  But I know, the more I clear out my blocked emotional energy, the better I’ll feel.

When we procrastinate, we’re worried that doing the task will make us feel a certain way.  And what we’re worried about feeling… is likely to be the very unresolved energy that’s already surrounding us, that we’ve already been avoiding.

We want to avoid ourselves by procrastinating.

Therefore, the more we work on ourselves, to clear out our unresolved emotional energy that we’ve been accumulating for a lifetime… the less we have the need to procrastinate.

The task we’re putting off doesn’t generate uncomfortable feelings.  It brings them to the surface.  It makes us aware of what we’re already avoiding.

It’s not the task we avoid.  It’s what we think the task will make us feel.  And what will it ‘make’ us feel?  Our own repressed feelings.

So what’s the answer to all this?  Get out your trusty paper and pen and get to processing your repressed thoughts and feelings.  Get that repressed anger and frustration and exasperation out of you, and onto the paper.  Get it out of you!

Then you’ll feel a lot less of a desire to procrastinate.  It might not totally end it, but it will help a lot.  That’s my strategy for overcoming procrastination with the least amount of ‘disruption’ to your current existence.  And the changes you do make, you’ll love!  Because all you’re doing to change is bleeding off the energies that currently frustrate you anyway.  The energies you’re afraid you’ll feel if you engage this task you’ve been avoiding. Win-win.

Now, what’s this ‘wonderful’ energy I talked about? The energy that is just starting to change my life?  The energy that even as we speak has been gushing into me and my life?

Well, I call it ‘the lubrication of life’.  This is a lubricating energy. When this energy is present, your life works.  When it’s not present, your life doesn’t work.  For most of us, this energy is present in some areas but not other areas of our lives.

When you don’t have lubrication in a motor, the motor will seize up and stop working.  First it starts to make noises.  Then the noises get louder.  Finally, something breaks.  Then it comes to a standstill.  That’s what happens when this energy is not present in a particular arena of your life.

Now when this energy is present, it’s just the opposite.  Because this is a light and playful energy.  It makes things fun and easy.  In fact, I’ve found myself being happier than I’ve ever been in my life.  I find myself spontaneously laughing for no reason at all, except that I feel so good.  In fact, I haven’t laughed so much since the last time I did psilocybin mushrooms thirty years ago.  Except this is much better.

Why?  Because it’s the lubrication for life.  It smooths out the rough edges and reduces the friction.  It’s indescribably wonderful.  Not that it’s all kicks and giggles.  It’s also been intense at times, but in a good way.

So what’s it called?  Well, there is a name for it.  It’s called ‘responsibility’.  But it’s not what you think of when you hear that word.  You’ve been taught and conditioned and coerced and cajoled into believing responsibility is the worst, most painful experience in the world.  And that is a complete and utter lie.  But so strongly have you been brainwashed, it’s hard to even read these words.  Because we have such strong programming to avoid it.  That’s why I didn’t say it at the beginning of this article.  Because you would already have stopped reading, probably.  If you’re like most people.

Look, when I first had an inkling that responsibility was a good thing, I tried to feel it.  I really did.  I created my own little meditation where I would imagine a pool of resonance, like a thick liquid, that was filled with responsibility.  And I tried to imagine myself stepping into the pool.  I couldn’t do it!  No matter how hard I tried, I refused to feel what responsibility feels like.  I couldn’t step into that pool. Poor me.

It took a lot of effort to get into that pool.  Numerous tries.  But once I did, I remember very clearly how wonderful I felt.  All afternoon after doing the meditation, it was magical.  Finally, I had to go drink some beers to come down, since I wasn’t used to feeling that good…

That was about six years ago.  Since then, I’ve given plenty of lip service to responsibility, but I never really felt the healing powers it has, until this energy called ‘responsibility’ started gushing into me.  Now I understand.  And I will change enormously in the days to follow. ( I hope!)

The prognosis for the ‘old Mark’ is not good.  Laughter and joy and an ease of life previously unimagined is in the forecast.  Life as it was meant to be.  That’s what I see coming now.

What about you?

Is there any area of your life that’s not working as you’d like it to?  Maybe that’s where you’d want to ‘take greater responsibility’.  I’ve started just imagining the energy of responsibility flowing into different areas of my life.  That’s how I’m working with it so far.

But you could start just by playing with the concept.  What would the energy of responsibility feel like?  What does it mean to be the lubrication of life?  What would that look like?  Can I get a sense of it?  Can I realize how heavily I’ve been programmed to avoid responsibility as if my life depended on it?

And where is my life working right now?  What works in my life?  Can I see the responsibility I’m taking there?

These are the types of questions you may wish to ask yourself.

Also, I have two products that can help.  One is called ‘Power Processing’.  This is where you take any problem or issue or area of your life, and ‘clean up’ your thinking and feeling and beliefs about it.  In this case, of course, the issue would be ‘responsibility’.  Or for that matter, your issue could be procrastination itself.  For more info go here -

http://ivar.info/powerprocessing.html

Power Processing is great for handling all sorts of issues.  I’ve used it myself for several years and I LOVE it!

The second product to help with responsibility is a meditation to heal the ‘false responsibility’ programming that’s been pounded into us almost since birth.  For more into check out this page -

http://creative-visualization.com/end-self-punishment.html

And let me leave you with this reminder -

When you avoid or put off some task, you’re really trying to avoid feeling the feelings that are already trapped inside you.   It’s not the task.  It’s what you think that task will make you feel.  But the feelings are already there, inside, until you take responsibility for them.

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Strategies For Overcoming Procrastination is a post from: Emotional Times

“Interpersonal relationship questions”.

Sounds like some big company’s mandatory training seminar for all employees… but in this case it’s just an answer to a reader’s question, which could be summarized as -

“How do I deal with other people at work in the most effective way possible?”

First, let’s start with you; your relationship with yourself. Because that’s going to determine your relationship with everyone else.

Examining and working with your relationship with yourself is most likely a big part of why you were even born.

To learn to love yourself as much as possible. To accept yourself with all your foibles and idiosyncrasies. To respect and value yourself as a spiritual being. To be kind and forgiving to yourself.

To sum it up, to be your own best friend.

And to let that relationship come alive – let it be real. Let it grow and evolve and be and express the dynamic energy it is.  To be able to exclaim, “I love myself!” and really mean it. And not in a narrow, narcissistic way either, obviously.

Listen, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to screw up. You’re going to do dumb things every now and then. We all do. Because we’re human.

You’re going to be embarrassed and humiliated sometimes, and it’ll be uncomfortable. But we have to let it be okay. Otherwise, we rob ourselves. We deny ourselves the opportunity to grow and change and evolve.

“I am a work in progress.”

You see, when you get stuck in life, somewhere at the root of it, lies a faulty relationship with self. I’m not loving and forgiving myself enough. Because if I were, I would be growing and changing. I would be overcoming the ‘stuckness’.

So how do you have the perfect relationship with yourself? You don’t. That’s a trick question. Why? Because perfection is static. And any relationship is dynamic. (Unless it’s dead.)

You can be perfectly dead, but not perfectly alive.

No, what you want is a living relationship – a real and authentic relationship with yourself. And if it’s real, there’s going to be some spilled milk along the way.

Let it be okay that you’re a human!

How do you do that? YOU CHOOSE. First, you’re willing to let it be okay, then you choose to let it be okay that you’re a human. That’s it. It’s almost too easy.

The problem is we think anything worth having in life must come through struggle and suffering. And this is the exact opposite. When you suffer and struggle you’re saying it’s not okay to be human.

But when you embrace yourself – when you love and accept yourself – then why would you suffer and struggle? It makes no sense.

Now I understand, we’ve been programmed almost since the day we were born, that we have to struggle and suffer and endure great pain. It’s been pounded into our heads in many different ways that we must grind it out – gut it out – try harder – endure more.

“Anything worth having is worth fighting for.” Or however the saying goes.

I’m saying, now might be a good time to question those assumptions. Are they really taking you where you want to go? Are those assumptions really working for you?

We’ve been intensely programmed. If you want to change those assumptions, you’ll need to get in touch with that intensity. But you are worth it. So…

Besides, that’s a big part of why we’re here – to overcome our own programming and heal our relationship with ourselves. Programming that involves being told to ‘love yourself’ – but taught to ‘not love yourself’.

Now, for the second most important relationship you have – the one most people don’t want to look at – the one with your ego.

Pretty much everyone can rally around the idea that you need to improve your relationship with yourself. Even if we don’t do it and don’t know how, for the most part we know we ‘should’. But a relationship with your ego? That doesn’t even make sense.

And that’s just the way the ego wants it. It will tell you anything to get you to not look at it. Which should be a clue as to how important it really is to look at it.

Your ego is like a tiny little version of you that sits on your shoulder. Always whispering in your ear. Can you hear it? Listen closely. It’s there, believe me. And it’s always whispering to you.

Always talking to you. Always telling you what’s going on. Always interpreting reality for you.

It will be talking to you your whole life. It always has, and it always will. As long as you’re in a human body, you will have an ego. So what is it?

Your ego is the part of your consciousness that serves as the eyes and ears for your mind, just as your real eyes and ears serve your brain. The job of the ego is to bring you data. Your job is to interpret the data.

Unfortunately, something goes wrong. We end up shaming our ego because we ourselves were shamed. Our parents or parenting figures put their shame into us in some way, and we tried to dump it onto our egos, because that was about all we could do.

The ego, with a mind of its own, starts to resent us and wants to hurt us. And the only way it can do that is by twisting and distorting the data it gives us.   In other words, by lying to us.  Which it can only do if we let it.

These last few paragraphs summarize one of the greatest relationship challenges any person will ever face in their whole lifetime.

Your ego also functions as ‘the mirror of self’. It allows you to reflect yourself back to yourself. It allows you to ‘talk to yourself’ as opposed to just thinking your thoughts.

You know the saying that this is a world of duality?

Ego makes possible the duality of self. Your ‘self’ is split into you, and your ego.

Does that mean it’s valuable to learn all you can about your ego?

Only if you value yourself. Only if you have some sort of reason to live. Only if you want to grow and improve yourself. Then it matters quite a bit.

If you’re depressed, or anxious, or have low self esteem, each of those experiences couldn’t happen without you telling yourself stories about how life is and how you are. Well, who do you think is telling yourself those stories?

Your ego is the closest to you. And it’s always whispering in your ear. If you can’t tell when it’s you or when it’s your ego talking – that’s not good.

I always cheer a little bit inside when someone buys my audio files on “Healing Your Ego” because I know they’re in for a real eye-popping experience, as they learn just how serious the situation is with their ego. Then they learn what to do about their ego, to make is strong and positive. So it can most effectively do its job.

You can’t become a wise person without working with your ego.

The relationship you have with your ego is the second most important one you have, after the relationship with yourself.

That’s because your ego will always be the ‘middle man’ between you and your soul, you and your higher self, you and your spirit, you and your Creator… in fact, it’s the middle man between you and everything else.

It’s in the middle between you and your co-workers.  Just like their ego is in the middle between them and you.  And as you understand how the ego works, it becomes easier to understand why other people act the way they do.

And Then Comes The Shadow…

While your ego provides an inner reflection of you, your shadow gives you an outer reflection of yourself. What I mean is that you will often see yourself in other people, compliments of your shadow.

Your shadow can reflect the parts of you which you refuse to be responsible for. The pity you don’t feel because it’s buried in judgments. The anger that’s too confronting to face. The hurt you shove down and deny. They can all show up in the people around you.

In fact, almost any person who ‘pushes your buttons’ most likely is reflecting some part of you that’s been buried in your shadow. Your shadow, unlike your ego, actually has your best interest at heart. It knows you need to deal with yourself, so it helps you out by giving you the opportunity to heal and change and grow.

One of the best ways to heal a relationship with another person involves healing it in your own shadow. I love going to my shadow because I never know what’s going to happen. But it’s always fascinating and helpful. Each time I travel to the domain of my shadow, it’s an adventure.

Find out how I do it here.

Besides your ego and your shadow, other parts of you may or may not be influencing your relationships with others. Your inner child and your inner adolescent come to mind. If you function as either one of these two parts of you, that will strongly color any relationship you have with any other person.

In fact, any time you are not functioning as the responsible adult, your relationships with others will suffer. Guaranteed. (Assuming you’ve reached the age of majority, of course. If you’re a teenage, then obviously you’re supposed to act like a teenager!)

So it all goes back to your relationship with yourself. The healthier that one is, the healthier the other ones will be as well.

But what about interpersonal relationships?

Now, since we’re not perfect and we’re all a work in progress, how do we deal with others in the best way possible? (And I’m going to talk about the people who push our buttons in some way, cause if we already get along with them, that’s a whole different ballgame – and a different post. )

About twenty years ago I discovered that if I went into meditation, and mentally asked another person to come to me, they usually would. And they would tell me exactly what they thought of me. Whereas, in the ‘real world’ they might not reveal their true feelings, in meditation they would.

As you might imagine, it was a mind-blowing experience. One of the many things I discovered is that I was a mirror to them, just as they were to me. Meaning, people were projecting their own biggest issues onto me, whether I had anything to do with those issues or not.

As an example, one woman who I thought was ‘the world’s biggest cheapskate’ actually thought I was a super-cheapskate. Well, anyone who really knew me realized I threw money around like a liquored-up sailor boy on shore leave…

Later on, another much more important discovery I made is that I could work out my differences and problems with people in my own private meditations. Twenty years ago, I could not have done this, because I had too many of my own issues to deal with. But the more I healed myself, the easier it became to heal relationship issues with other people while I was meditating all alone, by myself, in the privacy of my own bedroom.

Here’s what I do now:

If there’s something I have to work out with someone, I’ll first go into meditation. Then, once I’m grounded in an altered state, I’ll mentally ask them to come to me. Then, I’ll just look at them and try to sense them as vividly as possible. Then I may reach out to touch them or feel them in some way.

I’ll try to get a sense of their energy. And that’s what I work with. I just want to feel them. I try to take in their energy as much as possible. I bring it into my heart.

If I can feel it cleanly enough, that alone will usually heal any unresolved issues we have. It could take one meditation, or more likely several, maybe even a lot of different attempts.

Does that sound crazy? I’m just telling you what I experience. The key, obviously, is to be able to feel their energy cleanly. Meaning, to just feel, without telling yourself a story about what it all means.

I realize that can be quite a challenge, because if we didn’t get enmeshed in our own little story about this other person, we probably would have no problems with them in the first place.

What I’m asking you to do here, is to find the story you’re telling yourself about this other person. I would suggest writing it down, to really clarify it in your head. Maybe write a lot about it. Journalize it, and process it. Both.

Meaning, write it out carefully and deliberately – all the facts and details and ramifications. That’s the journal. Also, write out all your feelings about it. Write quickly, with gusto and abandon. Write and write and write. Free-association writing. That’s processing.

That’s where I would start. Then, maybe try to imagine them mentally, and feel their energy and perhaps talk to them in your own meditation. With an eye to “how can I heal myself here?” And “what contribution am I making to this relationship?”

You see? Very important to know what I bring to the table. What is my impact?

(And as for picking up the other person’s dominant thoughts about me… I never want to do that anymore.  Believe me, you’ll never be impressed by what someone else is thinking.  Trust me on that.)

And finally, what about the ‘real world’ interactions with them?

Since everyone is different, I respond differently to different people.  Some people can handle a lot more joking around than others.  My natural tendency is to defuse situations with humor, but sometimes it’s best to just be a hardass.  It depends on the person, and it depends on how I’m feeling at the time.  Due to the complexity of human relationship dynamics, I don’t have a one-size-fits-all response to people.  Except -

I always try to be real. True to myself.  Honor and respect myself.  Stand tall in my own shoes and in my own skin.  And let whatever happens, happen. And I always seek true dialogue.

Seek true dialogue. True dialogue could be defined as ‘open and authentic communication with the willingness to change’.

That means I’m NOT going to be close-minded even if the other person is.

Dialogue is vitally important in today’s world. Because when we don’t have dialogue, imagination collapses and all we can see is our own point of view. We become blinded. We become unable to imagine. We become polarized. Which is what we see in the world today.

There’s no better example than American politics. Our leaders no longer work together. Instead, extreme viewpoints prevail. Polarization.

Ironically, we’re all sinking on the same ship.

Your job is to help change this. How? By setting a good example. By being willing to engage in dialogue, even if the other person won’t. You can be the light of hope you were always meant to be.

It has to start somewhere. Someone has to take the high ground here. And since it probably won’t be that other person you have problems with, it’s going to have to be you.

Take the high ground. Which means  you’re working on yourself at the same time. This isn’t about stuffing down your anger and resentment! It’s about healing it ‘on your own time’ so you can be as clear as possible when you’re dealing with others. That’s how you truly become the winner at life.

Years ago I was in a relationship with a woman who blamed me for anything that went wrong. And I took everything she said to heart. Meaning, I did indeed look for my own contribution to the problem, rather than blaming her. (Which is what I really wanted to do!)

And a funny thing happened. My own personal growth and change and healing skyrocketed. I made incredible strides inside myself and it helped me immensely in the long run. She helped change and shape my life by her pettiness.

Now, I’m living a wonderful life. And her? She’s broken in so many ways. In so much pain. Or so I’ve been told. I haven’t seen her in years. But you get my point.

I rolled up my sleeves and worked on myself rather than sink to her level.

And at a certain point, my resonance lifted me right out of that relationship.

That’s true magic. And looking back now, I see it answered most all of my interpersonal relationship questions, without even trying to.

What about you? Is there some high ground you can claim?

(Meaning, is there something about yourself you can work on?)

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Interpersonal Relationship Questions is a post from: Emotional Times

In my last post on bipolar symptoms I revealed some of the details of my experiences in the past with bipolar disorder.  (And in case you’re curious you can read about the signs and symptoms of bipolar disorder on this page – signs of bipolar disorder.)

As I was finishing up the last post, I said I’d made peace with the inner maniac inside me. But as soon as I wrote those words, I heard a voice inside loud and clear that said, “No you haven’t.”

So I figured I better stop writing and see what was going on. I discovered quite a bit about my inner maniac in the last few days, and it was quite surprising. It’s not what I wanted to find, that’s for sure.

You see, in some sad sick way I’d actually almost deified this part of me. Put him up on a pedestal. Almost proud of him, I was. I admired his moxy. He was the wild and crazy part of me, while I was much more scared and cautious and reserved. He was the Fun Guy. When it came time to tie a bell around the cat’s neck, my inner maniac was the mouse who would do it.

“I’m crazy. Don’t make me prove it.”

I counted on him almost like a big brother who was always there ready to kick somebody’s ass if they messed with me.  My spotty employment history was pocked even worse by getting fired from a good percentage of the jobs I did manage to obtain. Thanks to an inner maniac who couldn’t keep his mouth shut when the boss was a buffoon or a blowhard or guilty of some other crime.

So after such a colorful history, rich with bipolar tradition, it was sad to actually get up close and personal with my inner maniac and see what he was really made of. This part of me which I had idolized and idealized turned out to be much less lofty than I gave him credit for.

Here’s what I found:

When I first heard that voice the other day telling me I had not yet made peace with my inner maniac, I wanted to ignore it. But I’ve spent way too much time working with the inner parts of me. I’ve also worked to retrieve my power from them. The more power I take back, the less I hear my ego or some other ‘lesser’ part of me speak.

I can’t let inner voices go unchallenged.

When I say ‘voices’ it’s really just thoughts in my head. But rather than coming from my own conscious mind, they come from some other part of my consciousness. From what I’ve been able to gather by talking with and observing others, I’d say many if not most people do indeed have ‘voices’ in their head, but these voices are usually considered just thoughts from the person’s own mind. With practice and discernment, you can usually get to the point of recognizing if the thoughts are your own or from some other part of your consciousness.

Anyway, I knew I had to investigate. So I go into meditation and ask my inner maniac to come forth. “Show yourself to me. I want to talk.”

I see a giant of a man, about eight feet tall or taller, and looking exactly like me. Same body proportions. Only bigger. I reach out and touch him, to feel his energy, the way I always do. It almost makes me cry. I don’t know why.

He looks transparent. Not solid at all. Weird. And after a few words of saying nothing of substance (which I instantly recognize as my ego talking) he has no more to say. Disappointed and a little confused, I leave the meditation to go think about this.

Maybe I wasn’t on my game, and I just need to go back there and try again. The second time I go back, I again feel his energy, and it again touches me. What is that? Sadness? Remorse for all I’ve done? A weariness that goes so far beyond words? A loneliness? Probably all of the above.

This energy I’ve spent so much time hiding behind has created a lot of pain for me and for others as well. I’m probably tapping into that. Lots of forgiveness has already happened. Lots more, I suppose, wait to happen. So much I’m not proud of.

What a contradiction. Proud of the maniac, but not what he’s done.

In this meditation I feel the repressed energy that gushes up from down below. Just feel. Bring some of that unresolved energy of the past into my heart. Just feel. No excuses, no justifications, no rationalizations. Just feel. I open my heart and feel that energy – the jumbled, contradictory confusing energy. I don’t have to figure it out. Not now. Just feel it so I can bleed it off so I can get clear about what in the world is going on here.

Third meditation. Still no coherent message; no meaningful dialogue with this part of me I call my inner maniac. But now I start to see. I start to see through it. I start to see what its made of. And I’m disappointed.

Now I understand why bipolar disorder is so misunderstood. Why the signs of bipolar disorder are so elusive. Why experts say it can’t be overcome – only beaten into submission with drugs.

The signs of bipolar disorder are constantly shifting and changing because the inner maniac is constantly shifting and changing. It’s a moving target. It doesn’t stay the same. It can manifest in different ways.

Here’s why:

I discovered my inner maniac is actually a composite, like an alloy. It’s made up of various other parts of me. For example, it consists of my inner martyr, my inner outlaw, my inner addict, my ego, my inner sociopath, my inner adolescent, my inner adolescent, my inner chauvinist, and a few others as well.

Let me stop right here and briefly explain chauvinism, lest I be misunderstood. Chauvinism exists as an energy that blankets this earth. The tip of the iceberg of chauvinism consists of putting women down. But that’s such a small part of it, it hardly even counts.

Chauvinism uses domination as its tool to keep people small. It creates a lose-lose reality. I believe all people have an inner chauvinist inside us, not just men. Because chauvinism is not about men debasing women! Or women debasing men.

You can read about the principles of chauvinism here.

It’s an elusive energy that consciously seeks to remain hidden. But I digress…

The reason my mania was so hard to even talk to in meditation is because it’s really just an ever-changing, shifting composite of other, lesser, parts of me. It was more martyr than anything else. Martyr. What is that, exactly?

It’s another less admirable energy that blankets this earth. The energy of martyr says, “I don’t create my own reality. Reality happens to me.” Martyr separates me from my power, my realness, and my authenticity.

My inner martyr, along with many other parts of me, came together in some unknown way to form one overarching energy called mania – my inner maniac.

The reason it’s so hard to pin down is because there’s a constant dynamic between these parts. One day it may be mostly my inner sociopath. Another day it could be mostly martyr. A third day it could be mostly my inner outlaw, or inner addict, or even the broken man of shame, perhaps acting shamelessly.

It’s a moving target. Ever changing. So my signs of bipolar disorder shift and change as well. And all I’m left with is to say I’m crazy. Because I don’t understand and I can’t comprehend and I couldn’t even begin to explain what the hell is going on.

Because it’s, as Jimi Hendrix says, a ‘frustrated mess’.

That’s how I see it, after working with it these last few days. A week ago, I didn’t have a clue about my inner maniac’s makeup. I just thought it was handled in some way because I hardly ever feel mania anymore.

When I do feel it, I almost immediately recognize it. And I know to start focusing on my heart, and letting in my true flow of emotion. In other words, I know mania is a signal that I’m not being responsible for my feelings.

Now, what if you experience mania? Does that mean you’re not being responsible for your feelings? Well, I’m not going to point the finger at anybody. I don’t want to accuse anyone of being irresponsible. Not because it isn’t true…

But because it’s such an inflammatory statement. When you call someone irresponsible, ‘them’s fightin’ words’. But that’s not what I’m doing.

Saying “you’re not responsible for your feelings” is not the same thing as saying “you’re not responsible”.

You see? The first statement speaks to an action you take and a mindset you adopt. Probably without realizing it. The second statement speaks to who you are as a person. Big difference. A strong, healthy, positive ego can distinguish between the two statements easily. A weak, negative ego cannot. Anyway…

You can easily get trapped in mania and see no way out. Believe me, I know!

I mean, you really, truly don’t see any way out. But here’s the situation:

It’s like you are in a prison, yes. But the prison has three walls. And where the fourth wall should be, instead there’s a barrier of ‘false evidence appearing real’.

When you walk deeper and deeper into the first three walls, you experience more and more craziness. Not fun. Bad things can happen. Regrettable things. Still, if you’re bipolar, at least you know what you’re getting into. You’re already living it. It’s already your identity. There might be pain, but there won’t be too many surprises.

What about the fourth wall? The different wall? You don’t know. What’s guarding the wall? Rage and anger and an intensity that screams ‘bipolar is a disease’ and ‘there’s nothing I can do’ and ‘I will always be this way’. And other similar statements.

If I’m not willing to deal with my intensity then I’m going to have to spend my days bumping into the other three walls and proving my situation truly is beyond hope. I will live the martyred life. Just like I already am. Not much will change. Unless they come out with a new drug. (Ha-ha.)

There’s a way out of mania. I know because I took it. You have to be able to deal with your own intensity. Because that’s where your power is. If this sounds hopeless, please understand that’s your martyr talking.

Your martyr beats you over the head with the club of hopelessness. Just like martyr does with everybody else, whether they exhibit signs of bipolar disorder or not. Martyr is not limited to bipolar disorder by any means!

It’s not hopeless. If one person can heal himself, others can as well.

So am I saying to throw away your meds? NO! I don’t want your family suing me when you fall off the deep end. Of course, they wouldn’t get much…

No, it’s about starting where you are. Looking for small incremental changes you can make. How can I take greater responsibility for my feelings? Am I willing to open up my heart a little bit? Can I let go of some of the stories I’ve been telling myself?

Can I start questioning some of my assumptions? (Which takes a lot more courage than it seems at first glance.)

Am I willing to process out my thoughts and feelings on paper? Write out what I’m feeling ‘with abandon’. Without stopping to think about what I’m writing.

Am I willing to start taking a good hard look at these other parts of me? Starting, perhaps, with the biggest liar of all. The loudest voice. The part of me that’s the closest to me of all the many parts of me. You know what I’m talking about? Click here to find out.

These are how you take small steps towards the goal of healing mania. If you want to, that is.

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Signs Of Bipolar Disorder is a post from: Emotional Times

Someone recently asked me if I would talk about my own experiences with bipolar disorder, and with some reluctance, I’ve decided to do it.

I was crazy, no doubt about it, and my bipolar symptoms reflected it. How I survived with only a few bumps and bruises is beyond me. Keep in mind, no one ever diagnosed me with bipolar, or manic depression. I’d never even heard the word ‘bipolar’ back then. And my only familiarity with manic depression was the Jimi Hendrix song.

Manic Depression's Touching My Soul

I just thought I was crazy. No one else I knew was doing the things I was doing, that’s for sure. But when you look at the manic depression symptoms, I certainly had all of them to one degree or another, at one time or another.

Depression started early with me. Some time in grade school. The mania, as I recall, started about the time I left home at 17. I hitchhiked all over the country, usually alone and without a penny in my pocket. At the time, I was too dumb to be scared. I was a fearless coward.

I found myself in numerous dangerous situations, but somehow always emerged unscathed. No character was too unsavory for me to associate with. No den was too iniquitous. On more than one occasion I can remember hearing a phrase that went something like – “Usually we kill people like you”.

On a lighter note, I also remember hiking across the Continental Divide in Colorado, visiting the Baba Ram Dass commune in New Mexico, frolicking on a nude beach in the Florida Keys, and sightseeing in Washington, DC. So it wasn’t all bad. Actually, I didn’t think any of it was bad at the time. Life was one endless adventure.

I was living life as a maniac. High on life, and high on whatever I could get my hands on. Nothing was off limits. It’s like I was seeking sensation. Any sensation. Completely reckless and without benefit of discernment. I did and tried everything I possibly could. No time to sleep. No time to be depressed. No time to be responsible…

Seeking sensation, in a wild and crazy way. Eventually I’d done and seen and tried all I wanted to do and see and try, and that’s when the depression came back with a vengeance.

“Did you forget about me? I didn’t forget about you!” it seemed to say.

How My Bipolar Symptoms Changed

I fell deeper than I ever knew I could. The fun was over. Life got serious. Very serious. And very heavy. Before long, the maniac came back to rescue me, and I started cycling back and forth from mania to depression. It was almost like – maniac by day, depressed by night. That was my new bipolar symptoms expression.

It's no bed of roses when you deal with bipolar symptoms.

It was at this point I started to believe I was crazy. Whatever love and caring and compassion I’d had, got stuffed down into my shadow, and I became a cold blooded sociopath. Now we’re getting to the part I’m reluctant – even three decades later – to talk about.

I hurt a lot of people, and I can never make it right.

Let me give you one example which is neither extreme nor isolated. I snuck into a law enforcement officer’s home and stole his service revolver while I could hear him in he other room. I didn’t know he was a cop before I entered the house; I didn’t know there would be a gun; I didn’t even want the gun. I just took it. I probably would have given it back, except the next day I couldn’t remember which house I’d taken it from. I’d been in so many…

Why would I do such a crazy thing? I was seeking sensation. I was numb, and I wanted to feel something. Plus, my ego was running the show. I did whatever my ego told me to do.

Somebody had to run my life. And if I’m not going to be responsible, that means some other part of me – some ‘lesser’ part of me – has to take over.

Actually, it was a pack of them, like a pack of hyenas. My ego, my inner martyr, my inner adolescent, my rage, my maniac, my inner sociopath, and a few others just for good measure. My life was ruled and controlled by the whims of various parts of me which I didn’t even know existed.

And they did not have my best interest at heart!

I was a victim of myself. Not because I had to be, but because I refused to accept any kind of responsibility for my life. I threw my power down, and refused to believe I even had any power. These errant parts of my consciousness picked it up and carried on when I wouldn’t.

Somebody has to drive the car. They took turns holding the steering wheel of my life and stomping on the gas pedal while I trembled in the back seat. This is the stage, in my early 20′s, where I started to get very, very scared. Too scared to leave the house.

I knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had no idea that I, like everyone else, have many different aspects to my consciousness.

The maniac never operates alone. My inner maniac is one of many parts of my consciousness. Mania doesn’t exist in a vacuum. At the very least, I needed an ego to lie to me, and I needed to abdicate responsibility for my feelings and my life.

Looking back, I’m not sure it could have been any other way. As long as I listened to my ego, as long as I had so much unresolved pain and shame, as long as I felt my only option was to run away from my problems and my life, then I was destined to go through some extreme mania as well as some horrible depression. Given the circumstances, I believe I was destined to live out those bipolar symptoms.

My ego and inner martyr told me I was helpless and hopeless, and I believed them. I became helpless and hopeless – a victim of the errant parts of me. At the time I could see no way out. I figured I would either kill myself, or someone else would do it for me. That was my ‘exit strategy’.

Finally, at the age of 27, I did manage to OD on coke. I remember looking down at a strange pale body which I felt no attachment to, and feeling so ecstatic that the pain was finally over. I reviewed my life, and could find no reason to stay. I felt wonderful and had no desire whatsoever to continue living on earth.

Unfortunately (as I felt at the time) I sensed what seemed like a giant hand pushing me back down into my body. All the pain returned. I was back with the ego and the maniac and all the others…

It’s funny how there was no grand epiphany, no divine revelations to accompany my ignominious return to misery. Life still sucked. Anybody else would have seen God or been enlightened or something. Me? I just returned to a miserable life and miserable bipolar symptoms.

My only avenue of escape cut off, I knew I would no longer be trying to kill myself the coward’s way by doing enough coke till I passed out. Or any other way, for that matter.

Anybody else would have pulled it off, or at least would have a book-worthy experience. But for me, it was nothing but a continuation of a life not worth living. Poor me. At least it shocked me out of the depression and the mania for a while, as the pity took center stage. And who’s to say which is worse? Pity is a silent killer in its own right.

Gradually, with the help of various parts of me who do have my best interest at heart, such as my soul, my spirit, my higher self and my future self, I was able to come to some realizations.

• I did not come here to be miserable.
• I did not come here to be controlled by the lesser parts of me.
• I did not come here to live a coward’s life of irresponsibility.

I came here to return to the natural life. And that encompasses quite a bit more than it might seem at first glance.

So what of the mania – and my bipolar symptoms – expressed by an inner maniac? The more I took responsibility for my life and my feelings, the less of an influence he became. By a decade or so after my ‘non-book-worthy’ near death experience, he would only show up at certain times. Such as, whenever I was in a fearful social setting. Like when I’d go to a party where I didn’t know anybody. Or, when I had some important meeting.

In other words, whenever there was a situation that scared me and I didn’t want to be responsible for the fear. Or perhaps a situation where I just didn’t want to ‘be real’ in some other way. I used my maniac as a shield to ‘protect’ me. This became my new expression of bipolar symptoms.

It might have been annoying, perhaps even insulting to others and embarrassing to me in hindsight, but still, no one – including me – was in any kind of real danger any more.

I let my mania take over when I didn’t want to be responsible for my feelings.

I never consciously worked with my inner maniac because I never knew he existed. Back when he was causing problems, that is. At this point, I acknowledge him and I’ve made my peace with him.

“No you haven’t!” I just heard a voice say.

Great. Let me go check this out, and I’ll get back with you on the next post…

This should be interesting.

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Bipolar Symptoms is a post from: Emotional Times

“I’ve been trying really hard to attract a soul mate into my life – I focus on it everyday. But it’s just not coming. What do I do?”

That’s a question someone just asked me. I understand how it feels. I know the longing for something and not being able to have it. It can get really frustrating to want anything and not get it. And the advice some people give is to stop wanting. Then you’ll be happy.

Here’s where they’re right:

When you long for something too intensely, it creates pain. Remember, pain is caused by a longing for, and a separation from, some thing.

It took me a long time to figure out that I was actually creating pain in my life by focusing so much on the longing. Because taken to the extreme, you just create a resonance of longing – wanting something so desperately, but never getting it.

See? You end up with nothing but the longing. You end up wanting it more and more. But in that resonance of intensely wanting, but never getting, you end up with nothing but more intense feelings. So the potential danger here is that you’ll create what you think about most – namely, not getting what you want, with even more longing, and thus more pain.

Now, here’s the flip side:

Desire is a tool of reality creation. You need desire to live your life. But it has to be tempered. It’s all too easy for desire to end up as desperation, which of course leads to more desperation.

You want a strong, powerful desire, and one good way to do that is to work with the desire cream as I explain in the e-book. When you work with the desire cream, you will be tempering your desire, and reducing the longing and desperation.

Looks like it's time to make some babies.

Another way to reduce the longing, while increasing the chances of success, involves stepping back and looking at the big picture. You mentioned you want to manifest a soul mate, and that’s great. Nothing wrong with wanting a soul mate, or anything else for that matter.

But why do you want it?

Because of the way you’ll feel once you have it.

That longing you feel isn’t really for the soul mate (or any other physical thing, for that matter.) The longing you feel is to experience certain feelings in your heart. It’s a yearning of the heart.

And you can fulfill that yearning right now, today. I suppose you’ve already heard the classic advice of what to do when you want something – just imagine you already have it. Well, I would tweak that just a little, and say feel the feeling of what it will be like to already have it.

That’s how you satisfy the longing and the desperation.

It took me a long time to really ‘get’ that simple advice. I’d heard it so many times, but it just didn’t register with me. It’s so easy, it’s so simple, and it works. “Feel the feeling of what it’ll be like to have what you want.”

Now, that’s not the only thing you do – not at all! Rather, it’s the first thing you do.

Because then you’ll be standing on solid ground. See, when you long for something, and you’re always thinking about it, and you’re obsessing over it, and you want it desperately and all that stuff, your foundation is weak and shifty. It’s like trying to build a house too close to the beach. You’re trying to build something on the sand, but no matter how hard you try, the structure just won’t stand.

You need a solid foundation under your feet if you want to build something in this world.

Now the thing is, you always have some sort of foundation. The reality you see around you comes out of, and is a reflection of, the foundation that’s already there.

The key involves creating a solid foundation under your feet, then you can create the structure you want out of it. In this case, attracting a soul mate, but it could be anything at all, for that matter.

So what is this foundation?

Technically speaking, it’s your resonance. Your intensity and your power express itself in many different energies which all come together to form a unified whole. When I say ‘different energies’ I’m referring to your dominant thoughts and feelings, your beliefs, your choices, your imagination, your will, your love, and various others as well.

To figure out what’s in your resonance right now, you can look to how you feel about your present condition. What’s the dominant thoughts and feelings? What do you keep telling yourself over and over? What do you feel? Where’s your intensity? How would you describe your situation in a sentence or two?

Now, what’s important to understand, is that if you currently feel this way, you may end up feeling this way even more in the future, if you don’t work to change your foundation.

I’m already working hard to get a soul mate, but it’s not happening.  What’s wrong?

First, the natural order of life is to get what you want, to be successful, and to live a happy, fulfilled life. That’s what naturally happens. But we’re not really living a natural life, are we? It’s a very dysfunctional world out there. Maybe you noticed.

We’ve picked up some bad habits living in society as we do. But here’s the basics of our situation:

1. We have a stream of raw material flowing into us all the time.

2. We create our lives out of this raw material.

Ideally, manifesting a soul mate should take no more effort than choosing, and then allowing it to happen. And if you’ll look closely at your life, you’ll see there were times when it took nothing more than a choice for something to manifest for you. Usually, though, that’s not the case. Because we won’t allow it.

Now, speaking directly to a soul mate, lets look at why it may not have already happened…

You most likely have used some of your flow of raw material to filter out the soul mate from coming to you. Why?

The relationship you have with your parents influences all your future relationships. And the relationship you have with your parent of the opposite sex will greatly influence your efforts to find or attract a soul mate. If you’re a woman, you may need to heal the relationship with your father. If you’re a man, then you may need to heal the relationship with your mother.

It may be part of your life lesson, where you decided before you were born that you were going to work with love in this lifetime, and to help you focus on it, you were going to have parents that would help you create barriers to love by what they programmed into you at an early age.

And when you really look at, who in the world doesn’t have issues with love? I see so many couples who cohabitate, out of convenience, who don’t have a clue as to what love is. For so many people, love equals some sort of pain or suffering. But if they’re already in a relationship, and they’re able to tread water, then they probably won’t be rocking the boat to explore love.

The Barrier To Attracting A Soul Mate

Your barrier to a soul mate consists of many layers, like an onion. Peeling away these layers one by one will get you where you want to go. For example, potential layers may be -

• No one would want me
• No one is suitable for me
• I’ll never find the one for me
• I’m not good enough to find my soul mate
• You never get what you want anyway
• If I find my soul mate then my life will be over because I’ve achieved my life’s purpose

Eventually, you may find it’s fear of the responsibility of a relationship that’s probably the bottom layer. Because why do you even want a ‘soul mate’? Usually, that means I’m looking for my one and only – which means I won’t have to do any work to keep the relationship going – it will just happen on its own.

In other words, I won’t have to be responsible for it.

Also, in my search for a soul mate, what am I getting now? That’s the key to getting what you want – to take responsibility for what you’re currently creating. One woman wrote me recently saying she felt ‘slightly deceived’. And until she deals with that energy (which was there long before her current efforts) then she will continue to feel slightly deceived.

So what do you do exactly? You peel those layers back one by one.

How do you do that? Ask yourself this question – why don’t I have a soul mate already?

Just write down the first thing that pops into your head. Then work to resolve it.  And when that’s resolved, ask the question again.  And resolve that next thing that pops into your head.

The bottom line; the sad truth here; is that if you really wanted a soul mate, you would probably already have it. So if you can find and understand where the fear is then you can feel that fear and resolve it and move through it so you can have that soul mate.

That chapter in the e-book on working with your thoughts and feelings around your secret payoff comes into play here. Find your payoff for not currently having a soul mate.

What are you proving by not having what you want?

What are you avoiding by not having what you want?

What secret wish is being fulfilled by not getting what you want?

These are the types of questions to ask yourself.

One final thing I want to throw at you: If there really were one perfect person for you, then the two of you would most likely have prearranged, before birth, to meet up. And you wouldn’t really have to struggle and work hard to meet this other person. It would just happen.

Instead, I believe for most of us, we could be compatible with many different individuals. We need a certain ‘type’ of person to achieve a ‘soul mate’ type of relationship, but many people would fit the profile that works for us. So it’s not about finding one unique person. It’s about clearing out our own obstacles and healing our fears of love and intimacy.

And understand, you’re working with one of the ‘big three’ here – love, wealth, and health. Anytime you work with one of these three areas of your life, you can bet there’s going to be plenty of baggage to clear out. I happened to read about a program just today that covers how to get a soul mate by systematically clearing out the baggage, and you can check it out here -

The Soul Mate Attractor

I realize I’ve touched on a lot of different angles in this article, because I just wrote stuff down as it popped into my head. A complex topic like this deserves much more information than I can write out in one short article.

For example, we didn’t even look at how you’re logistically going about looking for a soul mate. How many women do you ‘interview’ each week for the position of being your soul mate? How many women do you talk to? How many women do you even consider?

Are you putting yourself in a good position to meet this soul mate?

Another important angle we didn’t cover here is the most important relationship of all – the relationship with yourself. That has to come first. You have to love and accept yourself first before you can have any other healthy relationship – whether it’s with your Creator, or with another person. And let’s don’t forget the relationship you have with your soul…

The essential question I really need to answer: do I truly want a soul mate, or do I want to just want a soul mate?

Big difference there, which trips up a lot of people.

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Attract A Soul Mate is a post from: Emotional Times

To understand emotional health, let’s first look at the constituent parts that make it up.

It starts with ‘Source Energy’.  What is that, exactly?  Well, maybe after I die I’ll come back and tell you!  In the meantime… I guess we’ll have to leave it a little nebulous.  I certainly don’t know.  Anyway…

From the source energy comes a flow. I call it the flow of raw material, or the flow of life energy, or the flow of emotion.  Labels don’t really do it justice, obviously.  I see it as sort of like a lava flow.  It’s the raw material out of which we manifest our reality.  All potentials exist inside this flow.  We have the raw materials to make anything we want.  In theory.

But before the flow makes it into us, it’s modulated and down-stepped and reduced.  First, by our unconscious mind.  Then, by our subconscious mind.  Then, by our own conscious filters and all the other parts of us that have their hands in the cookie jar.  Such as, our ego, our inner child, and many others.

What’s left of the flow then enters our heart. And by the way, that big-bosomed bald headed woman with toothpick arms and legs you see in the diagram… that’s actually my attempt to show the relative value of the human heart.  Not the physical organ that pumps blood throughout the body, but the true heart – the esoteric heart.

The heart that science is not yet advanced enough to see.  Only poets and dreamers and visionaries can detect this heart. Or people in love.  Or, sadly, people in emotional pain.  They know this truer heart all too well.  But not in the way they’d like to.

Something mysterious happens in this heart.  Something I’m afraid the mind will never fully understand.

The flow of source energy enters our heart.  And somehow, some way, through some unknown mechanism, the heart takes this flow of energy and precipitates it into the reality we call our world.  Our heart takes the energy and projects it onto some sort of movie screen that we call ‘reality’.  Which in fact is nothing more than a very sophisticated illusion.

In the diagram, I show a small square little world.  Because that’s what it is.  With sharp edges and angles and well-defined boundaries.  And rules.  Lots and lots of rules.  It’s the smallest, most insignificant part of the process of life.  Yet somehow, in some strange curious perversion, it has been elevated to the most important part.

Emotional health refers to the degree to which the flow of source energy enters the heart unimpeded.

That’s what emotional health is.  How much of the flow do I allow to enter my heart?  The more raw material that I allow in, the greater my emotional health.

In one sense, good emotional health is so simple and so easy.  Because all you have to do is to let the flow of emotion enter your heart.  But on the other hand, it’s so hard and so difficult.

We come into this life in a much purer state than how we end up.  Not perfect.  We still have plenty of filters from day one.  Filters we come in with.  Filters from the unconscious mind.  Filters we bring in with us for our own reasons…  unknown to our conscious minds.

Then, from day one, we start forming subconscious filters.  At first, we only take in filters from our mother, or the mothering figure in our life.  Then, after we break from mother, we start taking in filters from our environment.  Later, once the conscious mind has developed, we take in filters from our father, or fathering figure.

By the time we reach the age of ten, the filters are set.  We ‘know’ how much we deserve.  We ‘know’ how much we’re worth.  We ‘know’ if we’re good enough or not.  And on and on it goes.  Filters on top of filters on top of filters.  Some contradict others.  It becomes like a mish mash of spaghetti that surrounds us.

These filters determine our degree of emotional health.

See, it’s not really our heart that determines our emotional health.  As far as I’ve been able to determine, the heart always does its job.  When we say we have a ‘broken heart’ or when we believe we need to ‘heal our heart’ – what we really mean is that we need to remove the filters that impede the flow of emotion into our heart.

Remember, emotional health refers to the degree to which you have removed whatever stands between you and your emotions. And emotional healing refers to the process of removing the filters.  Like removing the plaque on the arterial walls of your bloodstream.  The more you scrub out the filters that impede your emotional flow, the greater your state of emotional health.

Emotional health is not an endpoint.  There is no final destination.  Emotional health is the constant and never-ending process of improving your relationship with your emotions.

But when we’ve been taught and conditioned almost from day one, to control and manipulate and repress and depress and devalue our feelings… well, that’s not going to enhance the relationship much, is it?  A healthy relationship never develops when one party attempts to manipulate and control the other party.  Nor does it develop when one party devalues the other party.

A healthy relationship develops out of love and respect. When I love and respect my emotions – all of them – then I am on the right track.  When I don’t love and respect my emotions then I am not on the right track.  And I am moving away from good emotional health.

When you love and respect your emotions, you expose your filters.  An example of a filter would be, love means you’ll get hurt. Another example would be, you made me angry.  One more example would be, I need to not be afraid.  And of course, there’s a million other filters.

Basically, a filter in this regard is any concept that limits your feelings.  A filter consists of the coagulation of the flow itself.  Just like a blood clot consists of the blood itself.

As you work on removing those filters to the flow (obviously a huge topic in itself!), a wonderful thing happens.  You start to expose more and more of your true heart.

What is this true heart, exactly?

Your true heart is a part of your consciousness. It’s more conscious than you are, actually. Or rather, it’s more conscious than the part of your consciousness that you’re aware of.

My heart is more conscious than everything I know about my consciousness.  My world, and everything I know about it; my self, and everything I know about it; pale in comparison to the consciousness of my heart.

My heart knows more than me.

Plus, this true heart is the seat of my consciousness.  That’s why it’s called the heart! Because it’s the center, or the seat, of who I am as a consciousness.

After working with removing the filters that impede the flow of emotion, the next step of the process of good emotional health involves reestablishing a relationship with my true heart.

Your heart knows more than you.  Your heart knows what’s best for you.  It knows what will help you.  It knows what will hurt you.  It knows what will cause you pain, and what will bring in joy.  Your heart knows all the answers.  Or enough of them, anyway.

Oh, but wait.  I shut down my heart when I was little.  I had to.  The world was too hard on me.  And I’ve been drifting ever since, without my rudder.  I’ve been drifting without the benefit of my internal guidance system.  No wonder I’m in pain, and my life sucks.  Now I’m starting to see.

I shut down the very part of me I needed the most, to make it through this life.

Boy, that explains a lot.  But it’s never too late to change!  I can start right now.  I can start by getting a sense of my heart.  I can see it as an object.  Or, if it’s not too threatening to me, I can sense it as a living, breathing, part of me.  The better part of me.  The truer, more-pure part.  The unconditionally-loving part of me.  The wiser part of me.

What would that be like?  What would it look like?  Can I even imagine?  Do I dare to imagine?

And what will this part of my consciousness think about me, after all these years of me shutting it out?  What would it say to me?  What would it want to say?  What is it already saying to me? Do I dare to listen to it?

Cause I can tell you, it’s going to get intense.  No two ways about it.  See, your heart may seem simple.  Maybe it seems like some sort of amorphous blog of energy.  But I can assure you, it’s way more complex than the human body.  It’s unfathomably complex.  And there’s a lot going on in your heart.

But if you will garner the courage to work with it, the rewards are also beyond comprehension.  At the very least, you will enjoy good emotional health.  And a greater aliveness than just about anybody else on this planet.  And a greater understanding of yourself and of how life itself works.

What would it be like to talk to your heart, the way you talk to your best friend?  Can you see how that might improve your emotional health?

You can bet that your heart is eager to be heard by you.

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What Is Emotional Health? is a post from: Emotional Times