That which we imagine, desire and expect without reservation usually occurs.
In relationships, however, it very often happens that one person expects the other to be in a certain way, or to do
certain things. Consciously or otherwise, they expect this in order for
the other to make them happy. Such an apparently desirable and selfless utterance as "I love you" can
often be understood to carry the meaning "therefore I am giving you the responsibility of being and doing
what keeps me happy."
This can cause disappointments and suppressed or repressed anger.
The other person has their own desires, and imagines and expects these to occur to suit them. This may produce a quite different result from that expected by the first person. It mostly does!
That is why we communicate.
We communicate to find the differences in others that make life richer and more interesting. We communicate to share our unique differences respecting and cherishing them as they are. We communicate to find out whether we are wanting sufficiently similar realities to include each other in a shared life.
You can expect that 'someone' be part of a future that you imagine, desire and expect, but you may be disappointed
if you choose a person and then expect that particular person to be and do what you imagine and want them to be
and do.
To desire someone to come into your life and then get to know and accept them as they are is much more exciting.
So if you find that some person in your life is not meeting your expectations maybe it is the expectations that need to be changed.
When you say "I love you" love that person just as they are. Just as they are being, doing and having.
Consciousness exists, whether it is focused through a physical body or not. Death is a cessation of physical experience. This may occur after a long, or a short life.
The transition from life to death, as we normally describe those states, can be just as exciting and pleasurable as any other planned change through our conscious existence. There can be more pain and suffering in birth and in life than there is in death.
The expectations of a being (person) determine what that being experiences at death, as in life! If a certain being expects to go to heaven after dying, that is what they will experience. If a being expects to be reborn, they will experience that reality.
Persons also are influenced by the emotions and expectations of others. Subconscious expectations which oppose what they prefer, or doubts about what they prefer can make the transition through death very difficult. Someone not wanting them to go, or grieving about the loss may also make it difficult.
It is most valuable and helpful to a being who is dying to allow them to go when they want to go, and to encourage them in their expectations and desires for the life beyond transition. Above all, they should be assured that they will not be causing difficulties for others by going, so that they don't feel that it is wrong to go. Love and reassurance make the passage easier.
Because death is the cessation of physical feeling, the withdrawal of the consciousness which is focused through a body, it is not difficult for a caring person nearby to feel when that withdrawal occurs.
Sudden death of a person leaves and unexpected hole in the lives of others.
Aspects of life that are planned and expected that involve the other appear broken. Behaviours, once normal and routine, now seem out of place. (I still put the scraps down for the dog sometimes and it is years since she died) Communication begins and you realize they are not there to receive it.
They are no longer physically here but sometimes you can become aware of them and some people feel they are still in communication with the person who has gone from the physical realm.
They are in another level of experience and it is perhaps very peaceful and beautiful. You are still here with an absence of things that regularly took place.
Feel the absence. It is there. But also decide that you are going to create other things in your life.
Soon you will begin to do so and the hole will be gone and only the pleasant memories remain.
An example of such a fearful experience would be an operation.
Sit quietly, and
1. Look at your life situation right now as if it were a movie.
2. Stop the movie at the present moment.
Ask yourself
3. What am I afraid might happen?
Play a movie, having what you fear actually happen.
See it in as much detail as you can.
Feel it as much as you can.
Play it until whatever you fear is completed.
4. Leave the movie, and go back to the point, where you stopped it the movie of your life.
Now
5. Play another movie in which something worse happens.
6. Play a third movie in which something even worse than that happens.
And
7. Play a fourth in which the worst possible things that could ever happen
occur.
8. Play the movie that contained your fear, again.
Now
9. Play a movie about a future that you wouldn't mind occurring.
Then
10. Play one with something that you'd very much like to have happen.
These movies are the possible futures which you could have.
11. Choose a future from the movies that you have created. If you think about another future you'd rather have while you are following this process, just play it through like the above movies before making your choice.
12. Go back to where you stopped the movie of your life,
and
13. Start it again, joining it to the future movie you have chosen.
14. Step back from your imagination into reality.
If there is still fear, it is from a different cause. Locate this one, and handle it in the same way.
Hold a tree. Feel its texture. Look at its colours. Listen to its sound. Smell it. Let go of the tree.
Repeat all the above. Feel the tree with different parts of your body. Imagine you are the tree, and feel your solidity. Feel your roots going into the earth and your branches reaching to the sky. Feel the sap running in your cells, the wind in your leaves and the birds in your branches.
Feel your own body, and imagine the tree feeling you.
Hold the tree.
Sometimes these are hard to identify--you think you feel.
Sometimes not feeling is sensed as an awareness of lack or of hollowness. There are a lot of suppressed feelings around!
To begin to contact these, start from your earliest childhood memories.
1. Write down a list of the feelings you remember that you have had.
2. Write the feelings that you think you might have had if you had allowed yourself to express them.
3. Be aware of times when you felt proud to have controlled your feelings by not feeling them.
4. What did you do to suppress each feeling? How would it have felt if you hadn't suppressed it?
5. Feel the feeling or imagine you can feel it.
(If you would rather not do this in writing, you could tell all this to a trusted, empathic friend. Maybe you could both do it for each other.)
6. Locate current feelings which you don't want to express and write down without any critical thought or attention to grammar, punctuation or spelling, exactly how you see it to be and how you think about not expressing them.
7. Name all those feelings.
8. With each feeling that you know or suspect is being suppressed ask the following questions replacing the feeling used as an example with one you have named.
Q. How does it feel to be ..........(angry)?
A. ...................(Stupid.)
Q. How does it feel to be ..............(stupid)?
A. ..................(More angry.)
Q. How does it feel to be ...............(more
angry)?
A. ................(Hurt.)
Q. How does it feel to be ..................(hurt)?
A. ..........................
(Lonely).
. . . . and so on. Keep asking "How does it feel" until you are actually feeling how it feels.
If there is difficulty ask "If this was another person, how would I imagine they would feel?"
When you find you are feeling an emotion--Consciously create it and feel it more.
Enjoy the experience of feeling.
Most people forgive most others.
Many people who can forgive others cannot forgive themselves.
What is forgiveness?
It is accepting that something has happened that you would have preferred did not happen or it is accepting that something did not happen that you would have chosen to happen.
The time in which these happenings should have happened or should not have happened is past. That time no longer exists.
Have you ever changed the past by continuing to want it to be different? Has anyone? Has anyone changed the present or the future by wanting to change the past?
When you say that you find it hard to forgive you maybe saying that you did not approve and you are therefore going to make your feeling of disapproval continue in present time.
It is only the feeling that you can keep in present time.
Maybe you want to punish someone or maybe you want revenge. This is causing more unpleasant feelings for you to feel. You can have them exist in the present and even into the future. It is a matter of choice.
Steps
1. Hold a piece of paper in two fingers.
2. Now decide to let go. Did you?
3. Hold a feeling.
4. Feel that feeling as much as you can.
5. Decide to let it go. Now let it go. Did you?
If there is any of that feeling left keep repeating 3, 4 & 5 until you let it all go.
Forgiveness is letting the past be the past and creating the present which you prefer, now. What you create in the present creates your future.
If you now can forgive others but are still beating up on yourself have a look at the idea of being fair. Would the person you admire most forgive one person and not the other?
Your universe is being created by aspects of yourself . Accept yourself. When you can truly accept yourself there will not be the need to forgive.
Be willing to experience the grief. Do not fight it. Really feel the grief. This natural human emotion will evolve into another emotion when it is allowed to flow.
The flow will be inhibited if you feed the grief. This is often done by feeling self-pity, and not recognizing that it is a different feeling.
(If you find you are feeling sorry for yourself, decide whether you actually want to do that. If so, set yourself a time limit for self-pity e.g. 20 minutes, and when that time is up, choose to feel otherwise.)
Steps
Once you have the grief flowing
1. Feel it consciously as intensely as you can.
2. Put it into imaginary containers
3. Turn it all into bright sparkling light and pour it into your self
Guilt is anger that you feel you have no right to have. Guilt is of no benefit to anyone.
Steps:
Find the guilt.
1. Write down, in detail, the experience about which you feel the guilt. Don't try to write in any particular way. Write it as it is, as it was, and how you feel
about it. Be honest.
As best you can, be the person you were at the time you felt the guilt.
2. Find the anger under the guilt.
Ask,
3. "Who am I angry with?"
4. Feel the anger; really feel it.
5. Create all the anger that you did not feel at the time. Feel it. You may, at first, feel anger as grief or frustration or annoyance or any other feeling. If you do feel any other feeling feel it and keep feeling it, consciously, until you can feel the anger beneath it.
6. Feel the anger
7. Say all the things that go with those feelings especially those things that you did not say at the time. Say it aloud if you can.
8. Imagine any other person who was involved answering you just as you would wish them to do so.
9. Forgive everyone involved.
You may find so much anger that you will need to handle it as in "unwanted emotion".
Headaches have a variety of causes. Some of them are physical, as when you damage your neck or back alignment, or when your posture ensures that nerves are constantly being pinched. There will even be a some relief for these headaches from the following.
Steps:
1. Locate where you consider the pain is.
2. Feel it.
3. Describe how it feels.
4. Describe the actual size of the pain in, or on, the head.
5. Locate the centre of the pain.
6. Move the centre at least 1 cm in the direction that you feel will be easiest.
7. Move it in another direction.
8. Continue doing this until you feel you can move it, little by little, to the edge of, and then away from your head.
Another Method.
Steps:
1. Locate the pain as above
2. Perceive its colour. You may see, sense, feel, or just know it. Some people can perceive its tone, as a sound, more easily. If you prefer, identify it that way.
3. Make it lighter in colour (or higher in pitch).
4. Locate exactly where it is again, and make it even lighter.
5. Do this until it is white. When it becomes white, the headache goes.
If you are perceiving it as sound,
5a. Continue until the pitch has risen beyond audibility--then some more--until
it is not sound, at all. The headache goes.
Some Variations
A.
1. Hold your hand on the surface (or above the surface--you choose) of the head, near the pain. Imagine your hand as the source of bright white light.
2. Imagine the white light being poured into your head by your higher self.
B
Imagine a beam of bright, white light coming in to the top of your head from an infinite source, and flood your head with it.
C
Decide to feel that pain as intensely as you can. Create it as intensely as you can. Feel it as intensely as you can. When you cease to resist the pain it can go.
Steps:
1. Stop. Stop everything you are doing. Stop thinking.
Ask yourself,
2. "What am I going to do, at the end of my lifetime, with the minutes
or hours that I save by hurrying?
3. Write what it is that you are saving all this time for. Don't just read this and think the answer. Sit down and answer it fully.
Now
4. Decide and write down which things YOU feel are really important for
YOU to do
--during the next few minutes
--during today
--during tomorrow
--the next day
--next week
--at the end of life when you stop hurrying
--right now.
The only time at which YOU actually experience your life is right NOW.
If you want to feel happy it must be right NOW. If you want to look at happy memories you must look at them right
NOW. If you want a happy future you are creating it right NOW by what you are being right NOW. (You can be a hurrier
or a time saver if you choose to be that.)
When you are hurried you are concerned with the amount of "doing" you are doing, and you want to do it all right now. In twenty years from now, what will you have achieved by trying to do it all at once apart from feeling stressed and anxious about time?
Wouldn't you rather choose your feelings and experiences?
Wouldn't you rather HAVE time?
You are the only one who can create YOUR time.
NOW
Steps:
1. Are you sorry? If so, allow yourself to feel the sorrow. Do not justify or excuse, just feel the sorrow.
2. Are you ashamed? Realize that the shame is a result of treatment you have received, but under it is real sorrow. Feel it.
3. Are you blaming someone? Realize that what you are blaming another for is something that is hidden within you.
You may indeed be genuinely sorry, with no clutter of the above feelings. If so:
4. Allow yourself to feel it. The name for this emotion of feeling genuinely
sorry is "remorse". It is a worthy emotion to feel.
After you have let yourself experience the remorse, if it is possible:
5. Talk to the person you have hurt, do
that honestly, without trying to make yourself either right or wrong. Tell
them what you have done, all of it,
and that you are sorry.
If it is not possible,
5a. Talk to another person that you trust. Honestly say what you did, and
that you are sorry. Accept that you are forgiven. Forgive yourself .
Firstly, feel the pain. Write it out as fully as you can. Find what you expected to happen that didn't, and/or what you didn't expect to happen that did!
The feeling of hurt comes from a perceived separation from love. It comes from expecting something which you felt was a need or a want, and it was not given. It comes from expecting another to be, or to feel, or to do in a certain way toward you, and having them be different from your expectations. It feels like a break in trust. It feels like a fracturing of self esteem and self love. At root, it is a break or interruption in your agreement about how things are, a break in communication, or a break in the closeness that you felt with someone.
It is the suddenness or the unexpectedness that actually produces the hurt. Realizing fully what the break was, that it was a fracturing of agreement, of communication or of closeness with someone can miraculously restore your clarity about your actual condition.
Steps
Ask:
1. Was it a break of agreement?
2. Was it a break of communication?
3. Was it a break of closeness or feeling of love with someone?
4. Was it a break in understanding?
5. Which ever you decide that it is reaffirm that that is what it was.
Ask yourself whether there was an earlier time that you experienced a similar hurt. If you find one, feel the pain of the experience, write it down, and identify it as above. The resulting clarity is greatest when you have found the earliest example of a particular kind of break.
Jealousy hurts. Jealousy is the belief that there is not enough to go around and that you are the one who is going to miss out. It's seeds are planted in early childhood. It develops and grows in atmospheres of competition and scarcity.
Feel what you are really feeling when you are jealous and you will feel the feeling of competing for something that you consider is scarce.
Sometimes it is the real or imagined scarcity of love or attention that you are competing for.
Sometimes it is felt as the effort to fight others for what is wanted. Sometimes one gives up and sulks. This proves once again to you that there is not enough for you to have.
Actually the basis of all jealousies is love.
In many cases when one is jealous of another this other has things that one wants. That which one wants most is love.
Realize that in reality there is an abundance of things and that you are equally worthy of them and that all that stops you is the belief that you can't have them.
You feel unloved.
In some cases you are jealous of someone's love and see that they are the only person with all the beauty and wonder and goodness etc. and that you desire them.
You may not believe what I am saying at first but everything that you admire in that other is yours already. It is part of you. It has become hidden from you and because you do not see it in yourself you see it in the other. This includes the love which you want.
Do you really love yourself enough to be able to love that other?
Give freely to another or others of your time and in any other way that you can.
Write a letter.
Give a smile.
Give understanding.
Give a flower.
Give with the thought of creating pleasure without a thought of getting in return.
Feels as though everything is gone? Feels like an enormous emptiness?
1. Tell a friend, or write down:
--everything you feel.
--all that is now lost to you.
--what you no longer have.
--the future that you no longer have because of this loss.
2. Feel the emotions that come to you. Let them flow, i.e. do not stop them or judge them or analyze them, etc.
3. Write about all the similar losses you know about, whether they be yours or someone else's.
4. Feel the feelings that are there.
Now,
5. Write about what will happen to you because of your loss:
--What will happen today?
--Tomorrow?
--Further into the future?
6. Feel what it all feels like.
How do you wish to feel in the future?
7. Write that down.
8. Feel it.
9. How could you create the future containing those feelings?
10. Take the first step.
You may need follow-up counseling, but this will help you over the worst of it.
Sometimes people have beliefs about themselves, that cause them to miss out on self-love. A healthy amount of self-love is essential for the flow of love, both towards us, and out from us.
If you feel a welling-up of love, and you believe there's no-one who could receive it,
1. Imagine yourself in a circle of flowing energy.
2. You flow love out and around the circle and simultaneously feel the flow of love coming in to you.
Do this at least twice a day.
This can be a devastating feeling that prevents you from doing anything in life. There are causes, which need professional help to resolve.
As a first aid,
Ask yourself,
1. Who has set the standard of what is good, that I am measuring myself
against? Using pen and paper, answer this question as fully as you can,
from all past and present experience.
Realize that good and bad are as you see good and bad.
2. Are you trying to mould yourself according to someone else's standard of acceptability?
3. When was the earliest time you did that?
We will handle the feeling, for the feeling is yours, the judgment may not be.
Steps:
1. Create all the feelings that go with not good enough.
2. Create them as intensely as you can.
3. Put all the feelings that you can find that go with "not good enough" into a container labeled with the words "not good enough."
4. Change them into bright, sparkling white light. This light now represents "being as good as you choose." Pour this light into you, and feel the difference!