A long time ago, the musical group Pink Floyd wrote and performed a song with the title, “Another Brick in the Wall.” The song is basically about what has come to be called “Social Control.” If you aren’t familiar with the song (and it is “ancient history” at this point), see “Another Brick in the Wall”:
A society, of course, requires some agreed-upon standards of behavior to be called a society. Not all societies develop and adhere to the same standards. If you are from the States and travel to England or Japan, for example, you will have to adjust to driving on the left side of the road. When it comes to stairs, not all cultures agree about which side should be for those going up and which side for those going down….
I have been wondering whether we aren’t entering (or perhaps have already entered) a period of increased social control. I was surprised to discover, for example, a store where as recently as last week I could go in, get a cart, make the rounds putting the things I wanted in the cart, and proceed to “check out.” That no longer works. The buyer now goes in the store, tells a store employee what’s wanted, and the employee goes about putting stuff in the cart. That was the routine at two places I went this morning. My question is why? How does that help either the store or the customer? Neither of these stores was the big grocery store where I do my weekly shopping. One was a health food store, and the other was the store where I buy bird seed. Next week I will know about my grocery store….
We all benefit, of course, when people agree to certain standards of behavior. We’re all safer, for example, when people in a culture drive on the same side of the street and agree with which side of the stairs should be “up” and which side should be “down.” The question is how much uniformity is beneficial. I hate to be paranoid, but…. I have, perhaps, seen more than my share of “futuristic” movies with themes featuring either “utopian” or “dystopian” social control. Regardless of the type of control, who benefits from increased social control?
Two novels come to mind: Brave New World (utopian social control) and 1984 (dystopian social control). Nobody dies or is tortured in Brave New World, which is not the case for 1984. Nevertheless, Brave New World does not depict the kind of society in which I would want to live, even if the life would be less painful than a life lived in 1984‘s culture. Some social control, is obviously required. We have jails for a reason, even if the wrong people are sometimes arrested and put in them. We are required to take a test to acquire a license to drive.
I don’t pretend to know how much social control is optimum. Different cultures have come to different conclusions about that. In some ways, such differences determine political party affiliation in the States. I have questions but no real answers, or rather my answers change with regularity. That may be true for culture as a whole. After all, what we call “life” seems to be one grand experiment, doesn’t it….
The way we experience time is not the same for everyone, and it changes for us moment-to-moment. NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) is the study of the structure of experience, and our subjective experience relative to time is about as subjective as one can get….
This past December, January, and February our time “flew” while we were spending the winter as snowbirds in Southwest Florida.
Then COVID-19 came onto the scene and everything about time changed.
We spent 4 weeks (Sunday, March 15 to Sunday, April 5) safe-sheltering in paradise. We continue to safe-shelter now that we are home.
I was very busy the last week we were in Florida getting ready to travel back to Michigan. We had finally received the written report on our home having passed the air-quality test following EXTENSIVE mold remediation work. I made food, packed our belongings, took drinking water, bleach water, home-made urinals, and rubber gloves. We drove straight through, with two short rest periods, and were in the van twenty-five-and-one-half hours.
Arriving home, was anything but easy. Post-construction chaos spread from one end of the house to the other.
I had no time for leisure. I completed 22 one-thousand piece, and one two-thousand piece puzzles during my time in Florida.
My days were long and nights were short as I cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned (did I say I cleaned?) before I could even unpack.
Whether it is clear to you or not, each day is 24 hours, and each hour is 60 minutes.
What are you doing with your time now that you have so much time on your hands? My neighbor and a friend are each sewing masks. Another friend is deep cleaning her home. Some people are napping. A lot of people are on ZOOM.
I found this quotation online: If you only had 24 hours to live, you wouldn’t ever think about laying on your bed all day … I think we’d all wish in those last 24 hours for a little more time to live.
Our perception of time has been radically altered by the imposed social-distancing, but time has not changed.
Close your eyes and imagine you have been given the opportunity to spend (not waste) this day. What wonderful, creative, inspiring, restorative things are you imagining? I am very grateful I love the practice of meditation.
Imagine the next few days unfolding into the next several weeks. Imagine being way beyond all of this and look back now and see yourself being very grateful for the time you had. (I wrote in my blog that my claim to fame might be that I peed in the van from Florida to Michigan during the pandemic of 2020).
Writing is one of the things I love. You have time now to have, do, be, and rest. This time is the rest of your life. It is time to enjoy it….
It is Time
It is time
(We know)
Possibilities lie beyond this moment now;
You are ready.
Let us join hands
Go to a place where new dreams are born-
(Listen. Our names are being called!)
We can go
(I hope)
To a place where the forlorn gather
When the heart yearns for relief;
Done with things as they are-
Just that.
We are done.
Travel to heaven comes not without peril
But the path is clearly written within your own chest-
Just say yes!
Your feet will find their way, one sure step and then the next
For it is time
We will be safe, rest assured.
Let’s set off now
Sail the seas of satisfaction to the shores
Of eternal serenity;
Hear the sounds of true solace
No more singing the dirge;
Music made from the instrument of sheer joy
Resonating with each precious soul
Suffering no more (Pray tell!) not we
We who know it truly is time.
The title of my article for this month comes from a song popular in the 1950s, “Time Was”:
Time was when we had fun
On the school yard swings
When we exchanged graduation rings
One lovely yesterday
Time was when we wrote
Love letters in the sand
Or lingered over our coffee and
Dreaming the time away.
Picnics and hay rides and mid-winter
Sleigh rides and never apart
Hikes in the country and
There’s more than one tree
On which I’ve a place in your heart
Darling, every tomorrow will be complete
If all our moments are half as sweet
As all our time was then
And there was indeed a time of at least relative innocence and tranquility as depicted in the song, which was written and popular in the lingering shadow of World War II. Although I was still a child, I can remember what life was like in the 1950s. We—both adults and children—were (at least in general) more innocent then. The country had just been through World War II and the Korean War, and we were eager for a more peaceful life. We had barely settled in to a relatively peaceful time when the Vietnam War required our attention.
Humans have a tendency to look to both the past and the future in search of an ideal time, when things were peaceful and people were happy. A long time ago, Morris Massy recognized the way people are forever influenced by what they experienced in childhood. That is neither good nor bad, it “just is.”
A well-worn phrase is, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” It is, however, a bit misleading. Life moves in one direction: forward. A well-known saying about this comes from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, 1859”:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
John Lennon is usually given credit for the saying, Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, which is basically an iteration of the “moving finger.” Most people most of the time do not think in terms of their lives having direction and velocity. We—all of us—are moving “forward” at the same rate of speed.
Although we have no influence over how quickly the years go by, we have reasonably decent control over how we spend the time. In general, that changes over time. When I was young, I used to enjoy spending time at the beach (I grew up in California, not far from the Pacific Ocean). At this point in my life, I would consider that a “waste” of time. The “moving finger” is always writing. Because we can’t go back to “cancel half a line,” we need to make good decisions about what we are “writing.”
This is not to say that rest and relaxation are “wasting” time. There are times, of course, when resting and relaxing are the best thing you can do, not only for yourself, but also for others. The important thing, it seems to me, is awareness. Where is the focus of your attention? I think it is important to be aware that the “moving finger” is always writing whether we are paying attention or not. A long time ago a speaker at a workshop I attended turned to the audience and said, “The next 5 minutes are yours. Use them well.” Only a few in the audience recognized that what he said was essentially a joke, as we had expected the speaker to “speak.” He did, of course, resume his talk by commenting on the ways people use time, including our response to his having said that the next 5 minutes were ours.
People (you, me, everyone) are using time all the time. We have no choice. I suspect that’s true even after death—but that’s a subject for another article. Meanwhile, from time to time think about the “moving finger” of your own life. This is not to say that rest and relaxation are a waste of time. They are actually an essential activity. The most important thing, it seems to me, is your awareness of what you are doing and why you are doing it.
So … the next five minutes are yours. Use them well.
Your world today is so filled with people who hate one another,
who blame one another,
who are filled with fear.
You cannot just decide to be compassionate, and say,
‘From now on I’m going to be compassionate.’
Compassion is a result.
For compassion to arise, the conditions for compassion must be present.
The primary condition for compassion is presence or mindfulness, because when you are present, you are able to see deeply. When you see deeply into how things are, the deep seeing no longer allows judgment and blame to be sustained. It no longer allows hatred to be sustained. It no longer allows fear to be sustained.
This is the power of wisdom and compassion.
~Aaron
Jessica Ortner was speaking on the 2020 Tapping Summit: “I can’t stress myself to a solution.” Wow. This statement fits truly with the understanding we have shared through Subtle Communication Systems, or SCS/NLP.
An easy way to imagine all of this is to think about the way old-fashioned phone directories listed individuals, businesses, and governmental agencies. There were white, yellow, and blue pages. You could not find “John Doe” in the blue county listing, nor could you find the office of the county commissioner in the white pages. “Walmart” was found in the Yellow Pages listing.
Emotions work that same way. You cannot stress yourself to a solution.
I appreciate tapping because neurolinguistic programming (NLP) processes such as “sleight-of-mouth patterns” and “reframing by degrees” are apparent. Reframing is a commonly used psychological technique that allows a person to see things differently.
If you look at a map, you must begin at the place marked YOU ARE HERE.
Loss of a job, for example, can be viewed as failure or opportunity. COVID-19 can be seen as a catastrophe, or a challenging time with myriad gifts scattered along the way.
Louise Hay’s key message in her second book, You Can Heal Your Life, is, “If we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed.”
One of my favorite tools for doing the mental work, in addition to tapping, includes: Freeze Frame Technique
Freeze-Frame – is the simplest of the HeartMath tools. It is a one-minute technique that allows a major shift in perception. More than positive thinking, it creates a definitive, heartfelt shift in how we view a situation, an individual or ourselves. When under stress:
Shift out of the head, and focus on the area around your heart. Keep your attention there for at least ten seconds. Continue to breathe normally.
Recall a positive time or feeling you had in your life, and attempt to re-experience it. Remember, try not simply to visualize it, but rather to feel it fully.
Ask a question from the heart: “What can I do in this situation to make it different?” or “What can I do to minimize stress?”
Listen to the response of your heart.
You may hear nothing, but perhaps feel calmer. You may receive verification of something you already know, or you may experience a complete perspective shift, seeing the crisis in a more balanced way.
Although we may not have control over the event, we do have control over our perception of it.
For years I have referred clients to The Work of Byron Katie. Being honest with the four questions produces surprising benefits. “Is it true?” “Can you absolutely know it is true?” “How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?” “Who would you be without that thought?”
Who would humans be without hate, blame, and fear? What is possible for humanity with more compassion and wisdom?
As Aaron said in the thought for the day above, you cannot just decide to be compassionate, and say, ‘From now on I’m going to be compassionate.’
Compassion is a result.
Author of Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav, The Compassion Virus is concurrently infecting the human species along with the Coronavirus. The more you know about it, the better. At this stage the Compassion Virus is highly contagious. He says:
RECOVERY PERIOD
There is no recovery from the Compassion Virus.
SUGGESTIONS
Examine yourself carefully for signs of the Compassion Virus. If you find any, take the following actions immediately:
Look at it with your eyes wide open. This is a potentially life-changing condition.
Cultivate it.
Treasure it.
Even though doing the mental work around the current conditions will mean different things to different people, stressing ourselves out by our attitudes, memories, behaviors, and beliefs generates additional unwelcome stress responses in the body for everyone.
For many of us compassion is a result of doing the mental work through the body.
We must nurture better feelings to access wiser thoughts. Check out my Wellness Tip “Vagus Nerve Stimulation” .
Write in a journal, play a musical instrument, ride a bicycle, go for a walk in nature, take a soaking bath…. Even while maintaining a safe distance, you can cultivate your favorite fields of opportunity.
The term WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) came into common use when computer screens became capable of putting letters and words on the screen that would look the way a page printed from them looked. At this point, of course, you have to be pretty old to remember what things were like in the “old days,” before WYSIWYG came into being. Now, most of us take it for granted that what we see on our computer screens will be what the document will look like when it comes off the printer. Computers didn’t come into common use until they had WYSIWYG interfaces.
If you are old enough, you can remember the days when only “geeks” used computers. They used special “terminals” that allowed them to access “main frame” computers that ran a limited number of programs for specific purposes, primarily mathematical. Now, of course, most people use computers, if only the computers that make their “smart phones” work. Times change. In fact, you have to be pretty darn old (as I am) to remember the days before computers and before automobiles had automatic transmissions.
And I know what it was like to write school papers on a manual typewriter back in the days before electric typewriters were common. And I am old enough to have used carbon paper when I needed multiple copies of a document. (If you’re still young, you may be asking, “What’s carbon paper?”) The perspective that comes from getting older is an appreciation of improvements over time. In a way, aging is like traveling—traveling in time rather than location.
Those who have had the opportunity to spend time in a number of cities, states, and countries see things differently because of their changing perspectives. I have been lucky enough to spend at least a little time in most of the the States and in Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Vietnam. In general, I have been glad for those experiences, with the possible exception of Vietnam, as I was not there at the best of times. Those experiences have added perspective to my life that I would not have had if I had known only Kalamazoo, Michigan—or more likely, Los Altos, California, where I grew up.
Some experiences change your perspective even as they are happening. Others take a while to “sink in.” Now that it is long behind me, I can appreciate my experience in Vietnam, for example, but I did not appreciate that experience until after I was back in the States and had returned to graduate school. Some experiences take more time to process than others before appreciation sets in. I have actually seen Vietnamese farmers working their rice paddies with water buffalo without fully appreciating it at the time. I was well into middle age before I began to appreciate everything my parents had done for me while I was growing up. The main thing, it seems to me, is to remain open to seeing more in your experiences as you grow older.
If possible, of course, try to see things from a new perspective even before you grow older. You may be able to cultivate more appreciation for another person, group, experience, or location you may have originally found less than welcome. A line from Shakespeare is, “Thou shouldst not have been old before thou hadst been wise.” The problem, of course, is that one grows old at a steady pace, and wisdom does not accumulate the same way years do. It is very easy to grow old before becoming wise.
But … what if you begin to think of how what you are experiencing might look from a different perspective. William Blake said, The altering eye alters all. Change your perspective, and you change everything. At a workshop Debra and I attended a long time ago, Richard Bandler said, “Years from now you’ll look back on this and laugh. Why wait?” Indeed, why wait?
Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
Spread your love like grass seed. Move out.
Don’t be afraid of potentially negative situations.
See each as a place to grow more flowers,
to cast your inner seeds out on this now fertile soil.
For as this time of transition draws nearer,
the soil is increasingly fertile.
So many are feeling lost,
are paying closer attention,
and are asking the way.
It is fertile soil
even if there is negativity presently growing on it.
If it wasn’t fertile soil
the negativity couldn’t grow.
That soil that can grow the seed that comes to it.
Let it be seeds of Light.
~ Aaron
A familiar off-handed compliment goes something like this: “You don’t sweat much for a fat lady.” Or, “You are smarter than you look.”
While we might not have used these exact words, you can bet you have (or have had) thoughts that plant seeds of darkness even as you wish for light.
“Worry is not the same energy as love,” is a statement I use frequently. People understand that. They recognize the truth of it. Yet, often we are more likely to let ourselves worry, especially with regards to those we care most about.
I got very few spankings in my life. Two to be exact. One was because I was smoking in the crawlspace. I was less than ten years of age at the time. The other was for riding a bicycle. The former spanking is more understandable than the latter.
I had been riding a bike that belonged to my cousin, Jane.
Jane and I met half-way, at a big hill. She rode her bike. I walked. I was not allowed to have (or ride) a bike, because my mom was a worrier, and a person can get hurt riding a bike.
Jane and I were taking turns riding her bike down and then walking it back up a fairly steep hill.
Coming down the steep hill, pedaling for all I am worth, the bike begins traveling speeds faster than my legs can go around and keep up with the pedals. As my foot slip ofsf the pedal, the pedal comes around right into the calf of my leg! Wham!!!
Ouch!
Searing pain—much worse than the worst Charley-horse possible, then a fist-sized knot and the blackest-and-bluest bruise appears. I am hobbling when I arrive back home.
I will not describe my memory of that spanking, but take my word for it: A spanking really can give you something to cry about.
Why do we miss what we are really feeling and act out other feelings in contradiction to our true inner world? In Glass Sword, Victoria Aveyard writes, “If you die, I’ll kill you.” That makes no sense….
My mom could have been angry that I had disobeyed, concerned that I had hurt myself, relieved it was not worse, and concerned I might disobey her again in the future. NONE of these appropriate feelings qualify for a spanking.
When a person behaves in a less-than-skillful manner it is likely the result of a lack of awareness. His or her inner world is driving the action.
Renowned psychologist and emotion researcher, Robert Plutchik, suggests there are just eight basic emotions:
Anger
Fear
Sadness
Disgust
Surprise
Anticipation
Trust
Joy
But our inner worlds are complex. We can be at a loss for how to identify, let alone express, them.
And the words we express are not the feelings. (See Joel’s February 2020 article.) Feeling words are the map, and our inner worlds are the territory.
Still, feeling words are the way of understanding and sharing our lives with others. A fluent emotional vocabulary can help us better understand ourselves and empathize with others.
You may benefit from a list of feeling words, especially if you have difficulty identifying what you are feeling, finding a way to say it, or if you simply wish to become more fluent in emotional expression. LiveBoldandBloom.com has created “The Ultimate List of Emotions.”
Knowing what you feel and how to express those feelings is a great tool for relaxed relating. Fertile soil grows anything. It is said we reap what we sow. Let’s sow seeds of light.
One of my joyful memories from childhood was looking at the night sky. I grew up in Los Altos, California, when it was still a small town in the middle of agricultural properties, primarily apricot orchards and bean fields. Between the time my family first moved there and my graduation from high school, the whole area had become “suburbia.”
The bean fields and apricot orchards had been replaced by residential subdivisions. Over that time, the vision of “star-studded” nights was gradually replaced by the neon glow of business advertising. I definitely miss the night-time magic of a “star-studded” night sky.
At this point in the evolution of humanity, there is no where left on the planet that hasn’t been influenced by what’s usually called “light pollution.” It is, of course, hard to tell whether that is “good” or “bad.” For most of human existence, people have been afraid of the dark. Primitive people had “camp fires” for a reason: the fire let them see what was about to pounce on them. Humans, after all, are not the biggest, strongest, or fastest animal. We use our brains to compensate for what we lack in size, strength, and speed.
In spite of the saying, “Curiosity killed the cat,” humans have always been the most curious of creatures. Consider the places humans have gone out of curiosity: pretty much everywhere on the planet and to the moon. Consider as well all the places we (humans) still want to go as suggested in what is usually called “science fiction” literature. My son was still young enough to sit on my lap when we started watching Star Trek on TV. He was about 10 when we went to see the first “Star Wars” movie in a theater. We went four times.
The TV series and movies brought up old memories of my times of watching the night sky. When I was about 12 years old, a friend and I were out in the evening watching a couple of lights moving across the sky. We had just noticed them and wondered aloud what they could be when the Navy launched jets from Moffett Field. We watched as the jets approached the lights we had observed. The lights changed direction and headed away toward a mysterious “something.” The jets couldn’t keep up, and the whatever it was disappeared in the distance.
Also about that time, my uncle who was a career Air Force pilot came to visit. My father asked him what was the highest he had ever flown. He gave a figure that surprised my father, who repeated the figure and asked, “What were you doing up there?” My uncle said, “Chasing a UFO.” My father asked, “A UFO? You don’t believe in those, do you?” After a moment of silence, my uncle said, “What I believe is classified.” That ended the conversation, but my uncle’s response gave me chills. I knew what it meant that his belief had been “classified.”
The “giants” of history and literature set a “high bar,” and most of us will never come close to that standard. And that’s OK. The main thing to remember is that we can always attempt to reach beyond what we can grasp. We can always attempt to strive, seek, and find without yielding.
In NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming), world view is called a “map.” Everyone understands that a map is not the actual territory. It is a representation.
What if our beliefs, even our religious beliefs, were also maps?
I received the following text message:
“OK. I have to ask you. Verge of war; earthquakes; Australia on fire. What’s happening?”
The next message continued:
“I’ve been sitting with a guy for days. He is a Seventh Day Adventist pastor. He is saying the Bible has told of these times.”
Well, there is a lot going on, that goes without question. What are you telling yourself about all of it?
(Some people would say the world is going to H-E-double-L in a hand basket. That is a metaphor.)
My response:
“Well, my teacher says as more light comes in, darkness also digs in. Like a dragon’s last roar. As we are able to be skillful with the darkness, we are helping the light to stabilize. Being skillful means not to collapse into fear or sorrow. It does not mean denial of those either.”
In the iconic book, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson changed our understanding of metaphor. Our metaphors run our lives.
In SCS/NLP workshops we would say it is easier to convince someone who thinks there is an elephant in the kitchen that the zookeeper came and picked the elephant up than it is to get them to realize the elephant was a figment of imagination.
People’s model of the world dictates the world they live in, but it does not change the world.
Lakoff and Johnson clearly show that metaphor is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. But, metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions often do so without our ever noticing them.
They truly are “metaphors we live by.”
A good friend has a transgender grandson. She also has a very rigid brother—a pastor who preaches that the Bible is literal, and that God hates sin, and same-sex relations are wrong. She was sharing with me how sad it makes her to see his public proclamations of his version of TRUTH.
We all know and love people with differing points of view. What is helpful? What is happening in our world?
Think for a moment about the text message asking me what is happening in the world. A purely scientific view would address the fires in Australia, for example, like this: Australia’s deadly fires are a result of nature. Extreme heat, prolonged drought, and strong winds have fueled these fires. You can look at data about the record-breaking temperatures.
A person with a primitive belief system might give credit or blame to a supreme being.
Some maps are better than others, but even the best map is still not the territory.
When you think about what you think, pay attention to the way you hold your map. Notice anywhere you demand (even in your own mind) that others agree with the way you see things. Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who developed NLP, describe a specific type of questioning called “Meta Model” questions in The Structure of Magic, Volume 1 in 1975.
This information has been available to us for almost 50 years!
We can certainly all get better at questioning our our world view, and learning more about anothers.
I had an uncomfortable exchange with my husband. His response to an unskillful comment I made was, “YOU are disrespectful.”
I clarified, “I am not disrespectful, but that was an unskillful thing for me to have said. I am sorry about that.”
He was not willing to let it go.
I offered another model of the world.
He rejected it.
Choosing not to ride along in stony silence, I said, “I am going to head home.” I turned left at the next intersection and headed back. Intending to go straight home, instead I passed our road and continued to ride in our neighborhood.
A couple of streets over I came upon a free patio table and 2 chairs. Perfect for friends of ours in a rental without furniture on their dock! Immediately I saw how the uncomfortable exchange had put me on that street at that moment allowing me to be the benefactor for our friends.
I rode my bike straight home to take the van and pick up the table and chairs. Pulling out of the carport, I saw my husband heading home on his bike. I waited, and asked him if he wanted to go with me to pick up some furniture for our friends. He agreed to go.
Everything changes with your model of the world. Nothing is operating in a vacuum. Scientists have discovered 300,000 new galaxies, discovered as part of a study involving 200 scientists from 18 countries, using a Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope in the Netherlands.
If there is that much we don’t know about the physical territory, imagine how much is missing from our maps.
Let just the mere idea of all of this enable us to change the metaphors we live by. Perhaps we might truly live happily ever after….
At one time, handbaskets were common. Briefcases (cases originally designed to hold legal briefs) have basically replaced them other than for the use of the term, “going to hell in a handbasket.” Both handbaskets and briefcases are small and relatively easy to carry.
The saying about going to hell in a “handbasket,” implied a quick and easy trip, as in “Hey, we’ll pack an overnight bag, and go.” I’m not sure how “hell” became the principal destination for those carrying handbaskets, although it is easy to see how lawyers and their briefcases became associated with legal difficulties.
Language provides a symbolic representation of reality. The word “sunrise,” for example, is not an actual sunrise, but is a metaphor that communicates the idea of “sunrise.” Those who speak English have a sense of what that means even if they encounter the word after the sun has “set.” Language is, in fact, a “map” that describes the territory, and we need to remember that The map is not the territory. The sun doesn’t “rise,” the earth rotates, which changes our perception.
One of the principal causes of problems in the world is the difficulty in getting people to see, understand, and appreciate differences in metaphors. I grew up in California and learned to think of rain at 40 degrees as “cold.” Then I spent my first year in college in Ohio, where winter temperatures ventured below zero with snow and ice. I didn’t like the cold and transferred to a school in Southern California for my sophomore year.
Eventually, of course, I learned to adjust to cold weather and currently live in Michigan. With “global climate change,” however, winter isn’t what it used to be (and may be again). My “cold” and your “cold” are probably not the same. The farther we are apart in terms of where we live and have lived, the greater the difference in our perceptions of cold.
Those of us who are old enough to have seen the black & white film, Nanook of the North, have some sense how members of an Inuit tribe adapted to the frigid temperatures of the northern environment. Most of us have doubtless also seen films of life in the South Sea islands or equatorial Africa, where anything below 70F is considered “cold.”
A long time ago, Morris Massey clarified the ways in which what you are now is based on What You Are Now Is Where You Were When. Even when people share the same basic language (French, German, English, etc.), their experiences of “the territory” will be different. Males, for example, do not live in the same “reality” as females. Adults and children do not share the same “reality.”
For all of human history, the world has been “shrinking” metaphorically, with people being exposed to a wide variety of cultural differences. Such encounters often resulted in wars. France and England, for example, were separated only by the English Channel, and their relatively close distance and significant cultural differences, led to centuries of warfare.
Although we typically take it for granted, meaningful communication is not a simple process. Even when people share a gender and language, they will have sufficient differences in perceptions of and beliefs about “reality” that distort their communication. The best communicators remember that and take it into account. An old saying is, “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.” At the same time, however, we need to recognize that we can’t not assume.
The best we can do is recognize the limitations of language and ask questions when we aren’t sure what someone else means. Your idea of a “nice day” and mine are going to be different. Sometimes the differences are so small as to be inconsequential, and other times they are sufficiently significant that they can lead to “knock-down, drag-out” fights.
Because there will always be some differences in perception and expression, we need to learn to respect the those differences and value them for the ways in which they make life richer and more meaningful. Arguing about such differences puts us on the “road to Hell” in a handbasket.
The angel number 2020 symbolizes huge potential.
When you keep seeing this angel number, it’s time to use your gifts and talents
to accomplish your goals and have the life that you desire. …
The appearance of angel numbers 2020 indicates it’s time to
live your life with optimism and enthusiasm.
~ Trusted Psychic Mediums
Some lively conversation this week led me to look back at NLP techniques designed to change beliefs.
Timeline therapy is a very valuable tool. You can imagine your present at this center point, and your past off in one direction and your future off in another. Not everyone ‘stores’ the past in the same direction. Your past can be off to your left (most common for those who read from left to right), or to your right (many left-handed folks have this one). You might have your past behind you. Your future might be in front and it might be looking upward.
How in the world do you determine what is what? Well, that is the most significant influence I know. YOU have to notice. Pay attention to what you pay attention to.
In June of 2016, I published a Tip for Well-being called A to Z of Healing. I mentioned a friend, Bob, who was having some side effects from a medical treatment he had gone through. When he asked the doctors what else he might anticipate, they told him they had no idea—Bob was the first person to have lived long enough to have the side effects.
I also mentioned another friend, Hank—whose own heart kept beating while on a left ventricular assist device (LVAD). LVAD is a pump that is used for patients who have reached end-stage heart failure.
In December of 2019, Hank had a stroke but his heart was strong enough that it kept beating for a couple of days even after they removed the LVAD. Hank passed away, but both of these men demonstrated the importance of not letting someone else’s beliefs limit your opportunities.
You have a right to challenge limiting beliefs… especially your own!
You want to notice what is standing in the way of what you really desire.
She put her hand up and the energy of Father John came in.
She says she doesn’t exactly know what happened, but a couple of months later when she had an echocardiogram the mitral regurgitation that was discovered in her 20’s was gone!
When she asked her cardiologist if it’s possible for mitral regurgitation to disappear, he said, “No. Perhaps mitral stenosis.”
(Be willing to honor the nature of healing… Healing is a return to the ever-present well-being that is our true nature, and can happen any time.)
I have often used a guided imagery to release emotions that had been stored in my body to help me make space for new beliefs.
Because the emotions have been stored in the body beneath conscious awareness, I have found it can be very helpful when I use finger signals throughout the process.
I say to myself, “I will let my left pointer finger be the way my body answers ‘yes.'” (You can use any finger on either hand, but I prefer my non-dominant hand.) “I will let my left thumb be the way my body answers ‘no.'”
After I have set up the finger signals, I begin by asking if there are emotions that have been stored in my body and it is helpful to release today. I almost always get an affirmative. Then I ask if there are more than one, more than two, more than three….until I know (or sense or imagine) the number of emotions I am clearing today.
Next I tell myself it is safe now for me to release the first emotion. I breathe and notice where in my body this first emotion had been stored. Play along with me and ask yourself if you now know where in your body emotion had been stored.
If the answer is no or you get no answer, it is easy to simply repeat the direction to breathe and notice where in the body emotion had been stored. It is truly amazing how quickly confirmation that you now know can come.
I proceed by telling myself it is now safe for me to know what gift or lesson this emotion came to bring. I breathe and notice what gift or lesson this emotion came to bring.
Anytime the answer is no or I get no answer, I repeat the direction to myself to breathe and notice. I feel my willingness to know what gift or lesson this emotion had come to bring until I know I know it is safe now to release this emotion.
I breathe and release…. Breathe and release….
I thank my body for releasing emotions and for allowing me to integrate the gifts or lessons into my life.
If you have an active prayer life, you can ask for help. Pray, meditate, repeating the sequence of releasing each emotion that had been generating a limiting belief.
I like to finish by affirming that I am able to notice the ways I enjoy life more now and into the future. Sometimes I notice that I feel lighter. Often I become aware when thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, or even memories have changed in very delightful ways.
Too complex? Don’t know what your limiting beliefs are yet? It is easy!
1. Grab your journal.
2. Ask yourself where you are unhappy or dissatisfied in your life.
3. Ask yourself Why?
4. Identify the limiting beliefs that are holding you back based on #3.
5. Find at least four truths that bust each of your beliefs.
(From CaterpillarstoButterflies.com)
Perhaps you will not instantly notice how you are different now, but even just having read this article invites you to feel release.
Start the New Year off by breathing and releasing limiting beliefs. 2020 symbolizes huge potential. Make it a year to remember all the best as you release the rest…. Live with 2020 vision this year and into the future!
