In the first chapter we looked at the effects of emotions as energetic phenomena that can turn against our internal balance and contribute to chronic disease. In the second chapter we considered the concept that what we experience in our day- to -day reality is an expression of inner turmoil. When we take this one step further to the third level of consciousness, we understand that we’ve created our circumstances with a certain intention. When we look back in time and evaluate our lives, we will see many times where our feelings got in the way and prevented us from behaving the way we really wanted to. Our emotions determine, to a great extent, our responses. We sometimes blow up because of little things; maybe you were tired after a hard day at work. After eight hours of being Mr Nice Guy, we let our guard down and don’t have the patience we should have for our loved ones. The good news is that people are like oranges: what’s inside comes out when you squeeze them. If there is a lot of bitterness or anger inside, the juice will be bitter. The best news is that with diligent practice of some simple techniques, we can replace the bitterness with sweetness and pleasure. So, even when we are physically tired, we can still evolve to show our love and kindness to our loved ones or anyone else. Our inability to cope emotionally comes basically from self-rejection (we will get into this more later on); let us first have a look at how the juice that’s inside comes out.
Here the response to stressful events is with emotions such as helplessness, despair, frustration, anger, jealousy, feelings of inadequacy, shame or guilt and so on. These feelings can be triggered by a phone call, letter or email from someone who criticizes us, something our spouse does that we don’t like, or a misbehaving pet. Anything can provoke the bitter juice from the orange.
Many people do not know how to deal with certain emotions once they feel them. They may flee by withdrawing, abusing mind-altering substances (such as alcohol, medication and drugs) or mood-altering substances (such as foods, cigarettes). They may also respond in an overly aggressive way, shouting or throwing tantrums. Alternatively, they may go to complete indifference and external calmness.
Others may have the tendency to believe it’s ‘wrong’ to have certain emotions or feelings, such as anger, frustration and desire. When they experience these emotions, they feel extreme shame or guilt.
ome respond to situations they can’t handle emotionally by doing things that are very dangerous. There is a subconscious death wish and they subconsciously welcome injuries and the attention they get as a result.
The foundation of all these ways of responding to external stimuli is based on how we see ourselves. Self-esteem is essential for emotional survival; without sufficient self-worth, life is a painful experience and we miss out a lot that is fulfilling and gratifying. We are different from animals in that we have the capacity to create and value ourselves accordingly. The irony is that we create an image of ourselves and then judge this image. Most people do not fully like the image they’ve created; any rejection of this image is self-rejection and the major cause of most of our problems. This is the biggest challenge of being human, because when we reject our image or parts of ourselves, we are weakening and destroying the psychological foundation that keeps us alive. We cause our own inner noise or turbulence. We reject and judge ourselves constantly and inflict unnecessary pain. This is a downward spiral that will lead eventually to avoiding anything that may worsen the pain of self-rejection. We create all sorts of defence mechanisms and avoid confrontation. The worst part is that we lose our objectivity and intuition. We filter everything based on whether a given thing is something to avoid, deny, suppress, blame or criticize. We limit our ability for intimacy, expressing our feelings, hearing criticism and asking for help or solving our conflicts. The end result is that we have no emotional choice – we become victims of our own shadows – and are emotional hostages with limited capacity to respond. The results are almost always the same:
Before we continue, take a moment of silence and reflect on what you’ve read so far. Do you recognize anything that you experience yourself? If you do, how would you like to change that? What do you feel is holding you back from making that change? What resource would you need in order to make that change? What can you do to have more access to that resource?
The biggest illusions that we need to overcome are:
Once you see through these illusions you are already halfway to emotional balance. If we are, ourselves, the cause of our internal mayhem, then we had better take control of the command centre and learn how to steer clear of the rocky road. The only help we need from outside is a course on how to take control of our own lives, and how to create for ourselves a supportive network. The essence is that everything that is important comes from within. This is the first clue to inner harmony. We need to accept ourselves, accept that life is difficult, that there will be roadblocks, that we will make a lot of mistakes and that many people will believe that we are the source of their misery.
Please read this section again at least two times and do not continue until you grasp it completely.
Journal your most important insights for deeper reflection.
There will be people who do not like you – and that should be OK. We cannot please everyone. It is important to grasp that, due to our childhood survival training, most of us learned some or all of the following:
These are the rules I remember still from 45 years ago when I underwent the survival training that was meant to help me cope with life. At that time these were useful. If we do not let go of this outdated model of reality, however, we make ourselves prone to mental illness.
Psychiatrists refer to clinging to an outdated concept of reality as transference. Transference is the way we perceive and respond to external stimuli, which is developed in our childhood and which in childhood was appropriate survival behaviour but which is then inappropriately transferred into our adult reality.
When we are children, our parents are the world. They are representatives of our future values, the world as we see it. We assume that the way our parents do things is The Way. The truth is that if you discover, for instance, that you cannot trust your parents, this will be translated as: ‘You cannot trust people.’ The length and quality of the time that our parents devote to us forms the basis for our self-love and self-esteem. All children are terrified of abandonment, because for the child abandonment is the equivalent of death. If we do not get a base of security and reassurance, the world will be an unsafe place to be.
One of the big problems that we may have is a parent who is overly protective. They often want to help so much that they don’t give us the chance to develop problem-solving skills. Later in life we will expect others to solve our problems and we will not take responsibility for ourselves.
Another area that may be lacking is discipline. Discipline is the greatest and most important factor in success but also in spiritual growth. Most people shy away from spiritual growth because they expect it demands too much discipline. In Dr M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled, he wrote the following:
Let us teach ourselves and our children the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and to experience the pain involved. I have stated that discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. It will become clear that these tools are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain or problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.
Dr Peck mentions four tools of discipline:
As we can see, most inner turmoil comes from:
Whenever we face inner turbulence, we must be able to stay connected with ourselves.
After 30 years of dealing with sick people, my conclusion is the following: all inner turbulence (emotional stress) comes from self-rejection.
Where does this self-rejection come from? We all have a so-called Inner Judge, which we normally hear as a voice in our head. This Inner Judge is the by-product of our upbringing. We have been conditioned and trained for survival by our caretakers teaching us which behaviours are wrong, bad, dangerous, annoying, loveable, acceptable and good. If we did not live up to their expectations we were punished one way or another. All of us will have emotional residues from this training. These are conscious (and also subconscious) memories of all the times we felt bad or rejected. We also had an almost impossible task to differentiate between behaviour and identity. When we were disciplined or corrected often, we believed that we as a person were flawed and that we were hopeless and bad. These are the unavoidable subtle traumas that have a tremendous effect on our self-esteem. This experience is the foundation of the Inner Judge, who will replace our parents and will feed on the unpleasant feelings associated with the part of our identity or behaviour that we consider not OK. There is a subconscious program in you that wants you to believe that you are a bad person as soon as someone does not agree with you or is upset or does not like you, or when you make a mistake or do not finish a task. The Inner Judge confirms some negative belief you already have of yourself.
There are six main factors that will determine how strongly you will reject yourself:
1. The degree to which your parents failed to make a distinction between your identity and your behaviour
Most of us do not learn that there is a huge difference between what we do (behaviour) and who we are (identity). Parents should always reinforce and show their love for our identity, and their disapproval of certain behaviours. This is best done with a technique called ‘sandwich feedback’:
– First layer: tell the child what he is doing right.
– Second layer: tell him what needs improvement and how you would like to see that improvement.
– Third layer: thank him for his willingness to listen and cooperate, and state how proud you are of him.
Unfortunately most parents are not aware of this technique, with the result that later in life our Inner Judge will criticize both our behaviour and identity, and tell us that we are no good and that we will always fail.
2. The degree to which issues are mislabelled as moral when they are about personal needs and/or safety
Let’s say that a child prefers certain clothes because all her friends have them, and you lecture her on the lower social class of her friends. Or when addressing performance in school, a father tells his son how he makes him feel ashamed or that the son is so ungrateful for all the sacrifices he makes to send him to school. Whenever parents make their children feel morally wrong because of failure to perform, poor judgement or personal preferences, this will lead to self-worth problems.
3. The frequency of negative messages
The average 16-year-old has heard around 180,000 times what she is not good at, what she should not do, why she doesn’t deserve something, how badly she behaves, and other negative messages. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘Can’t you ever get anything right?’ ‘Are you stupid?’ Sooner or later these messages will sink in and become future weapons for her Inner Judge.
4. The consistency of discipline (rules)
Children will constantly challenge their parents to check their consistency on the rules. If there is randomness and/or inconsistencies, as when the parents are tired, rules can go by the wayside. Only one conclusion can be reached: that you are punished, not for something you do, but for who you are. Guilt is often associated with inconsistency around enforcing rules.
5. Rejection by one’s parents
When a parent rejects a child by withdrawing or ignoring him or being and staying very angry about something, a great deal of damage to the self-esteem can be done. This, for the child, confirms that he is not worthwhile or loveable.
6. Verbal abuse and verbal rejection
When parents verbally abuse their children and tell them repeatedly that they are worthless and not loveable, this is the worst damage that one can imagine together with physical and sexual abuse. This will leave deep emotional scars that will influence future self-esteem levels tremendously.
These are the most important reasons we reject ourselves and often become our own worst enemies and critics. They’re also the reasons why a lot of people stay stuck at the first level of consciousness. No matter how hard they work to prove themselves, deep inside there will be all these demons that will create havoc and prevent inner peace.
We all have certain basic needs which, when not addressed or dealt with properly, can turn against us and cause us inner turmoil.
We all want to feel:
When we have adequate self-esteem, we will have totally different approaches and strategies than when we lack self-esteem.
When we can handle situations from a place of inner strength, we are able to:
When we are low on self-esteem, everything becomes different. Life is much more difficult to handle and often we look for hide-outs and escape. We cope with anxiety and conflicts by avoiding the situation that causes these feelings of inadequacy. Your Inner Judge offers help with this. The big paradox is that, despite the harshness and the negativity of the Inner Judge, he does make you feel better. Your belief that you are worthless will be confirmed; people don’t love you, and you cannot trust anyone. Now you can relax because there is no need to be anxious; you will feel less incompetent, less vulnerable. The best cop-out is to buy into the following statements: ‘There is nothing I can do about it,’ ‘I am the way I am,’ ‘If I had been brought up differently, everything would have been different!’
The reason this issue is so important has to do with the impact our thoughts and feelings have on our energetic body. Wherever thought goes, energy and life-force follow. Most people are aware of energy being lost in the form of emotional ties and binding with other human beings and even pets. Most of us are not aware of how much life energy we spent on past incidents, regrets, old beliefs (often not even our own beliefs) and losses. Our thoughts of each moment indicate where our energy is flowing. When thoughts contain negative messages, underlying fear, lack of self-esteem, anxiety, worries and hostility, energy is being lost or blocked in the body. When we are more focused on positive messages or images, or do not resist what we cannot change and let go of old grievances and insults, the energy will circulate to the areas that were previously blocked, and healing can take place.
In whatever way we use our life energy, whether we utilize it to focus on anger and frustration, or on joy and harmony, it will manifest in our biology. Prolonged disharmony or weakness in our energy field will lead to physical malfunction and illness.
Often, our thinking is random: thoughts come and go. Our thoughts are, however, also projected outside of us into the connecting field known as the morphogenetic field. This is an electromagnetic field that engulfs the world and connects each one of us directly with each other. Other people can pick up on our messages and also our intention. This is where the non-physical senses such as intuition and clairvoyance come into play. All of us have non-physical senses and extraordinary capabilities; most of us are unaware of this, yet we still react to the unheard, unseen and non-verbal messages of others. Everyone is projecting their thoughts and feelings into the morphogenetic field; there are no exceptions. When we connect a feeling and a thought, we get a judgement. Every judgement leads to an energetic block in our bodies. Every time we judge ourselves, we create energetic blocks in our meridian system. Every time we judge someone else, we also create energetic blocks in our own body.
Suppose you are upset with someone. Every time you see this person or think of this person, hear his name or any other possible association, the feeling of being upset will be there as well and create energy blocks in your system. The more we judge, the more we become hostage to our feelings and the more energy will be sapped from our meridian systems. This will cause rigidity and stiffness in our bodies. This will eventually lead to sickness and disease. 32
There is a difference between a judgement and an opinion. An opinion is not emotionally charged and is neutral. We can change opinions quite easily when we get new data or information. It’s OK to have opinions, but as soon as you become attached to your opinion this will eat up energy. The key is to be non-attached and neutral.
The best way to deal with negative emotions is to focus on the feeling and not on the label or judgement of the feeling. What do we feel? Where do we feel it? How intense is this feeling? It is not even important to find the cause; the obvious cause is never the cause. It’s a trigger that sets off alarm bells due to old memories. Accept the feeling, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Suppose you have a negative thought about yourself and consequently you feel bad. You localize this as a heavy feeling in your stomach area. Then you completely accept this feeling and just be with it – thank your body for being such a perfect machine and warning you of this energy block in your system. The affirmation that I’ve found to be most powerful is: ‘I love and accept myself with this feeling.’ Send loving thoughts to the area in distress and visualize energy flowing freely through this area. Later on we will go deeper into the techniques that will assist you in speeding up this process.
The basis is simply accepting and loving ourselves, just the way we are. We don’t have to change anything; we just need to connect with the love we already have inside of us. By not accepting ourselves unconditionally the way we are, we are rejecting ourselves or part of ourselves. The commandment ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is based on the premise of loving ourselves first and unconditionally. Whenever we do not accept another person just the way he or she is, we are inflicting damage to ourselves. Accepting others does not mean agreeing with them or giving up our rights. It means accepting them the way they are without judgement, even when they do unpleasant things. The underlying energetic law is: every person we reject is a reflection of a part of ourselves that we reject.
In the end there is no difference between you and the other. We have created this moment in time and space and there is always something to be learned when we block our energies. Another way to look at it is to ask the question, ‘How can I deal with this person or situation without losing energy?’ Only when I accept others and every situation unconditionally, do I accept myself. Each and every incident, trauma, accident, situation, person is a part of my own creation, and thus I can accept and love it 100 per cent. In the beginning this can cost some energy, but it will become the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance leads to inner harmony, less loss of energy and unconditional loving of the self and others. Getting there will require dedication.