Life needs purpose; our everyday needs to have a purpose. Without purpose, we are void of an important aspect of what it is to be human.
The basic truth of life is that we are on a planet, which is traveling around something that burns (the Sun) and we are held down by gravity, which science doesn’t fully understand (and I am sure an elastic band is involved somewhere). In short, we have absolutely no idea what it is all about, so we give life a meaningful focus. In a sense, it doesn’t matter what the meaning is because we need to have a reason to live. If we didn’t, the enormity of the answerless questions would fry our ego mind. So much so that, for many people, life might become unbearable. Most of us need something to believe in, not always in a religious or spiritual sense, but to have a reason for living. Even those people who believe that nothing happens when you die and you simply turn to dust, are often focused on telling everyone else about it. And, in your experience, you may have known someone who quickly lost their purpose and gave up on life when they retired.
Something connects within us when we have purpose. Getting out of bed in the morning is a joy; a light shines in our eyes. Purpose doesn’t have to be anything monumental; it simply means something to you. My mother grows trees in pots and when they are big enough, she plants them in the local wood; she doesn’t do this for herself but for the next generation. They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is right now. I know many people who volunteer to make the world a better place. For me, the purpose of life is to choose love over fear and to keep on choosing love over fear. As we have discussed, love over fear is choosing love over ego, God over the devil. If we do indeed live lifetime after lifetime, the only thing we need to aim for is to choose love. Yet each lifetime gives us layers of the ego to overcome. How we overcome those layers is up to us, but the simple rule of thumb is to choose love over fear. That is life’s purpose in the big picture.
In the smaller picture of what it means for your day-to-day life, it is finding a way of life that fits in with the reason you decided to be born. Imagine that before you were conceived, when you were in the spirit world, some winged nymph presented you with a form – the pre-birth questionnaire. It is just typical that life would start with a form! On it you answered what you wanted to get out of this lifetime. It could have been based on your past lives, the lessons of ego and karma, and so you were taught a lesson that you knew you needed to resolve. The meaning of ‘karma’ is often misunderstood, but the general consensus is that when you do something stupid then the universe thinks you’re missing some education, and shows you better, by doing it right back to you.
You would have considered the best ways that you could be of service to the world. What you wanted to give in this lifetime. But then you came into the physical body, grew up and were taught how the world works. Now you know that you have to have a job, earn money, get a home, and raise a family. All of a sudden, your life’s purpose becomes about survival. The ego makes sure that you are looking after number one because it looks like that is what everyone else is doing.
Yet when we are not living our purpose, the light isn’t shining from our hearts and life feels meaningless. We don’t quite know what is wrong, but we know that something doesn’t feel right. It is at this point that we look for the purpose. Some people look for a life-changing experience; some people don’t look until they retire from work, and some intuitive people simply know they were born for some ‘other’ purpose.
Often, when we feel we were born to do something special, we believe it is our ego telling us this, but in fact it is often our ego telling us ‘it’s all your ego,’ when it is in fact our higher consciousness that knows what we wrote on our pre-birth questionnaire. Intuition isn’t a skill simply for the physical world; it is a way for us to tap into what we know at all of the different levels of our expanded consciousness. By becoming even just a little bit curious about why you decided to be born, your purpose starts to be revealed. One example of this might be finding patterns, such as butterfly numbers (this is when every time you look at the clock you see numbers such as 11:11, 21:21, and 15:15), and this is often a symbol of transformation. The more curious you become about why they are happening the more they happen. All levels of our awareness can be accessed through the four intuitive types: Mental, somatic, emotional, or spiritual. Rather than looking for our purpose in the external world, ‘what job, business, or way of life,’ intuition let’s us know that we already know.
We know that the ego wants to protect us and get us what we want. If you’ve ever done any acting, one of the first ways to develop a role is to find out what that character wants in every scene, and what is behind every speech and every line. This is also true in life; behind everything we do and every conversation we have there is a want. Finding what we want in our life is an important aspect of our development. Finding out why the ego wants something is often overlooked. The reason for most of our balanced (ego and love) wants usually comes from the pursuit of happiness or safety. Unbalanced wants often come from fear of losing what we have or not getting what we want. We may also fear letting down other people and not living up to expectations.
Finding out what blocks you from having what you want in life is best achieved by looking at why you want it. You might want to be a famous actor because you didn’t feel noticed as a child. That want isn’t likely to sustain you throughout your acting career. Many people also don’t know what they want because they don’t know what will make them happy. They may have found something that they thought would make them happy, and then it didn’t, so what next? Most of the time it doesn’t matter what you do in life as long as you know why you are doing it and your reasoning is from a balanced place: One of love and ego.
Understanding your motivations means you can understand why you want something at a deeper level. We then get to know whether we want it because of fear; a motivation that is unlikely to serve us in the long term. However, trying to apply intuitive knowing to the things that you want, but don’t serve your greater purpose, is difficult because the signal is weak. You simply can’t hear what your intuition is telling you because your wants are based in ego and fear. You can try to intuitively know if something is the right decision, when your intuition knows that the whole thing isn’t in your best interests or that you are being distracted from something much more meaningful.
If you can’t get a clear intuitive knowing then it is time to take a look at the reason you are motivated in the particular direction you are leading yourself. It is possible to use your intuition to be able to hear your ego’s driving force. The way to do this is to enter into an intuitive dialogue with the voice in your head. You can ask a question and feel from where in your body the answer is coming. Your head may tell you one thing in answer to the question and your intuition will answer with something deeper. Questioning yourself, as if you are another person, brings out answers from your inner knowing that you might not have been expecting.
I have two questions you might like to answer. These questions are very useful in helping to find a motivation for living your best life.
Often, whatever bugs you the most is what you were born to play a part in changing, for the better. What you don’t like in others might be a route for change in yourself. It can even be your ‘groundhog day.’ Your personal challenges are the inoculations you need for your greater journey. It is as if the challenges we experience make us a better vehicle for our service in this lifetime. Understanding what we don’t like about the world gives us clues about why we decided to be born. It is not that you have to solve this issue alone but this ‘annoyance’ is a work in progress, to either accept it or to do something to bring more love toward it.
Once you have identified what annoys you most about the world or humans in general, now take a look at how much it shows up in your life. You might also find that there is a whole bunch of things that irritate you, only to find on closer observation that these are all systems of a bigger issue. For example, if you’re upset by greed, corruption, and selfishness you might see that these are symptoms of a person coming from a perception of separation and fear. You might then reflect and see how many times in your life you have felt like you are there for everyone else and no one is there for you. Often you’ll find what we don’t like about the world shows up in our life but wearing a different hat. It is what we were born to heal: Sometimes we heal it in ourselves by trying to heal it in the world; sometimes we heal it in the world by healing it in ourselves. But no pressure, you’re not the only one born with the same task; it is our collective intention that makes an impact on the evolution of mankind.
Now, I do like a nice slab of cheesecake but cheesecake doesn’t make me like myself. I am not a big fan of going to the gym but the gym does make me like myself. I feel a sense of achievement; in fact I would go as far as to say that I like myself when I am suffering.
Think of as many things as you can that make you like yourself and list them. Be mindful of not writing down things that simply make you happy. Often what makes you happy becomes unfulfilling. What makes you like yourself will always sustain you. When you look in the mirror, you like what you see when you live a life that makes you feel good about being who you are.
These two questions and their answers are often enough to start opening to your life’s purpose and what you were born to do. You might find you are already on the right path or that some of the choices you have made in your life start to make sense. It might be that you always find yourself in relationships and friendships where you are healing the other person. By doing this, you discover that you like yourself the most when you are helping people, but you would rather not have this in your personal life.
Imagine if life really did start with a form and you could go back and change which boxes you ticked. You can. Whatever you signed up for in the contract of your life’s purpose, you can change.
Using intention you can change whatever isn’t working for you. In my life, I changed attracting friendships with people who didn’t support me, simply by deciding that I only wanted to support people in my working life. That one change meant I not only got fantastically supportive friends, but also ones who were willing to support my work, too. Whatever patterns you are repeating because of your purpose, you can look at them intuitively and see if they serve you or not, and then adjust accordingly.
A spiritual practice, as part of your daily or weekly routine, helps you keep in balance with your purpose. When we are at our best, we are at the center of who we are. When we are stressed or exhausted, we often find that our personality changes to a person unrecognizable to our normal selves. The same is also true when we are on a roll. When we are the best of ourselves, we can sometimes be unaware of other people’s boundaries. We feel great; unfortunately the people around us don’t feel quite so good in our company.
The best of who you are is found somewhere in the middle. The purpose of having a spiritual practice is to give you a regular opportunity to check in with yourself. Being spiritual is about ownership of who you are as a person. Going to see a therapist could be seen as part of a spiritual practice, as could taking time in your week to check in with your personal development. Being the best person you can be is spirituality. Making the world a better place by simply walking into a space with a smile is spirituality. Personal development is an important part of the growth of your community, your family, and every interaction you make.
Yet often people believe self-development is constantly to seek betterment or even perfection. As you can probably guess by now, the belief in perfection is an ego state that is out of balance with the truth of who we are. The truth is that there is nothing wrong with you at your basic level.
A good metaphor for this is to picture yourself as a very basic bicycle. You have two wheels, a frame, and handlebars; everything you need for the road of life. Your basic bike is perfect. It needs nothing more to enable it to do its job of moving forward. But then something happens, someone tells you that life is difficult and you’ll encounter many hills. So you get some gears. You then start to load the bike down with supplies on the handlebars; you might also want the bike to look better, so you paint it. You then might see someone else on a bike going faster than you and, even though they have more physical capacity, you half kill yourself trying to keep up. The truth is that your bike, without all the extra stuff, is perfect. Spirituality is about removing all of the bells and whistles from your basic bike to remind yourself that everything you are is enough. However, that can be a terrifying thought. What have you been working for all these years if you are already ‘it’?
When you look at humanity’s basic drive to move forward, to achieve success, or even reach enlightenment, it usually comes from a belief that we will then feel whatever we want to feel. This might be happy, relaxed, accomplished, full, worry-free, or any number or all of the positive feelings. When we let go of that belief, the motivation behind moving your bike forward becomes about the simplest things: To feel the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, to be witness to the beauty in the world, to find fellow riders to make the journey more of a joy in the times when the hills are steep, and simply to feel connected to something outside of yourself. These are the people who walk into a room with a sense of peace. You can still have goals, but the goals become less personal and more embracing of the things that truly matter, finding things to share rather than things to take. Knowing your purpose and having a spiritual side to you gives you balance.
You might like to say that spirituality is like having stabilizers on the bike; it means you won’t fall over if pushed sideways by life. Having a way to check in with yourself brings you back to the basic bike. The idea is to stay in balance in the middle, knowing that there is nothing wrong with who you are but being mindful of what your ego is presenting to you, and how you in turn present that to the world. In a sense, the best way to be in the service of others is to be of service to yourself. When you have your center of balance, you bring less toxicity into the world with your fear triggers.
Whenever you are in an unbalanced situation, your balance becomes the tuning fork for the sound around you. So if you are in a situation of conflict at work you tune yourself back to love. It is the same answer as when you are with a friend who is having a hard time, you tune them back toward love. You don’t have to give a sermon; you are that step closer to love. It also means that if a person is bending you out of your balance with their actions, you have a central place for your boundaries. Having a midpoint for your boundaries means that you know how far you are extending them. You don’t give mixed messages by having an ever-changing level of self-esteem.
I was involved in a car accident once. It was a clear case of the other driver’s error. However, I have been told many times never to apologize at the scene of an accident, as it is seen that you are taking the blame. The driver getting out of his car was clearly about to blame me. I smiled and said ‘That was unfortunate.’ After a few sentences, where he tried to blame me, he then went on to blame some construction workers a mile down the road for causing the traffic buildup. In fact, he blamed the accident on all sorts of things including the weather. The one thing he didn’t see as being at fault was himself. Simply holding the space for him to have an ego spin was all I could do. When he finally stopped spinning, he was able to deal with what we needed to do to be on our way. Of course, his ego spin could have sparked a spin of my own. Having a spiritual grounding means that no matter how triggered someone tries to make me, I will slow down their spin just by holding the space. It does make life easier. This was my spiritual service to the driver and also to myself.
The ego wants to make other people ‘wrong’ and it justifies that it is right in doing so, by saying ‘they are in the wrong.’ But this is what people mean when they say ‘two wrongs don’t make a right.’ They should also say that balance can make it right. This kind of centering isn’t easy or possible without self-esteem.
Having a sense of purpose, a spiritual code, or a spiritual practice such as meditation goes a long way toward having a sense of self-esteem. When you know that you are a good person, you live more in balance and allow others to treat you better. Having a self-development practice and allowing this to show up in your interactions in your life is spirituality. Here are some ideas you might like to adopt:
There are many ways to check in with yourself and keep your balance. Find one that works for you.
Another way to stay in balance is to know your values. Your values create a safe container for all the decisions you make in life. If a decision resonates with your values, it can become part of your life; if it doesn’t, it goes on the outside of your safe container. Knowing your values becomes a spiritual and moral code; it means that you can’t be tempted into making choices that you may later regret. People who have values are often respected and trusted.
Trust is fundamental in any relationship. It is not up to someone else to trust you blindly; it is up to you to be constant in who you are in order to earn that trust. Trust is rooted in faith, and to have trust is to have a belief in someone. Trust is not to be taken lightly because when you break someone’s trust, you break his or her faith. How many of us have had our faith in people broken over and over again? Yet we still have to live and to love. You have to have trust, you have to believe in someone, and then you have to have faith. Intuition can guide you to the people that you can trust. However, you have to be able to trust yourself first. This is the core of self-belief, which, unlike confidence, can never waver. The foundation stone of self-belief is sticking by your values.
Having values also means you recognize the people that you want to be in your life, resulting in a happier time and getting hurt less. As humans, we judge people. When you judge someone with love-based intuition, you will see both sides of who they are. When you judge someone with fear, you will only see the side that could harm you. Both ways of judgment are useful for self-protection but, interestingly, we often ignore what we know. The inner critic will tell us off for being judgmental. When you have values, if another person doesn’t hold the same values as you it is unlikely that you’ll be a match as friends, business partners, or lovers. You can still admire those people and be attracted to them; however, for safety they need to stay on the outside of the container.
One of my patterns is seeing the good in other people and thinking that I can help them by loving them into change. Often I can see that their wall of self-protection, which causes them to lie or cheat, is due to bad experiences in their past. My belief is that I can show them a new world. Unfortunately, they tend to show me their world. It can take you longer to find lost faith than it can to find a new friend or partner. Your faith is valuable and too precious to lose. Help people, but only on the outside of your safe container. For me, that means as clients and not as friends.
Values are something we need to teach our children, as they are bombarded with media images teaching them the value of stuff. The value of money becomes greater than the value of life. This makes for an upside-down world. In recent years we have seen the outcome of a lack of values being expressed in business and politics. It is my belief that there will be a positive backlash, retuning to basic human values. We simply cannot have an ordered society without trust, as when we lose faith in other humans we have lost everything. Roger Steare, who describes himself as a Corporate Philosopher and Professor of Organizational Ethics, says:
‘Journalists routinely ask politicians “tell us what your policies are.” Why don’t they start asking about their principles – their moral principles – as those are the foundations of a moral community?’
Values are very simple. When you look through the list below, think about:
You might like to make a list of these top values; don’t expect them all to apply to you. In fact, a few core values might be of more benefit than a long list that is unsustainable.
Not sharing all of the same values is perfectly acceptable, but some values will be fundamental. My value in honesty is a deal-breaker in any of my friendships or relationships. Because of this I have fewer friends, but what is a friend if it’s not someone I can have faith in? Not to mention the fact that it’s annoying as an intuitive to know that someone is lying to you, but out of politeness you can’t say it. Calling someone a liar is a bigger taboo then being one.
So how do you handle situations when you intuitively know that someone is telling you a lie? There is no way you can prove it in an evidential way. For example, I had to put my dog on a flight from San Francisco to New York. I did extensive research into the best airline – one where I could drop off and pick up my dog from inside the airport, and not two miles away in a cargo bay. This part of the journey is the most stressful for the dog. I found an airline that would do it in the best way possible. I asked lots of questions, checked, and double-checked the arrangements. Something felt wrong; I checked in with myself and really felt that this wasn’t my paranoia coming through as ego fear and not intuition. I checked and checked again until I became annoying to myself, as well as the person on the end of the phone.
On the day of the fight, I checked in the morning with a phone call. The original arrangements were confirmed. Then I got a phone call to tell me that the office was closed at weekends and my dog would have to board the flight from cargo, exactly what I was trying to avoid by paying more money and going with this airline. My inner knowing was watching a slow car crash with no way to know exactly what was going to go wrong, and not able to stop it. Living through intuition, this will happen from time to time. There will be situations you are awake to, but can do nothing to stop happening. What creates an act of consciousness is how you handle it. Being enlightened doesn’t mean you don’t feel all of the uncomfortable emotions, it just means they move through you quicker.
What we think about life’s purpose, we often think about in terms of a career or a way of living. We would like to have a purpose that is unique to us. In fact, humanity shares one purpose: To seek out love and overcome fear.
Our life’s purpose is to remove all the blocks we have in place that stop us finding a profound sense of love. Every lifetime when we reincarnate, it is for the same purpose, although we might all be on different rungs of the ladder in terms of our closeness to love from one lifetime to the next. We see this in people’s different values and personality types. I like the personality profiling known as the ‘Enneagram.’
The Enneagram model defines nine personality types (which also define their worldview and motivations), which are illustrated by the points of a geometric figure called an enneagram from the Greek words ennea meaning ‘nine’ and gramma meaning ‘written down’ or ‘illustrated.’ The geometric figure also indicates the connections between the types, often a subject taught in academic psychology.
You could see these personality types as also linked to the evolution of the removal of ego blocks. As we move closer to love, we also see changes in our personality type. However, this isn’t a numeric calculation, of which one is the best or worst personality; it just shows the blocks we are presented with in this lifetime.
Below are the nine personality types; don’t expect to know yours simply from the description below – that might need some deeper inquiry.
People are complex, of course, and don’t fit neatly into nine personality types. However, the sound/vibe/energy of a person can be broken down into frequencies of evolution. As an intuitive, you can start to recognize what sound a person is making, how it relates to sounds of people that you have known before, and how to group people according to their compatibility with yourself or others. You can also understand more about their needs and how they complement or contradict you. For example, a personality type seven, ‘Enthusiast,’ will not understand personality type four, ‘Individualist.’ The Individualist needs to really connect with their feelings about a situation before they can move on from it. The Enthusiast has already moved on and is having a brilliant time.
The wisdom of the Enneagram gives us ways of perceiving new pathways in our relationships and new ways of satisfying our deepest desire to get along and to be decent people. It also allows us to understand that people simply are at different levels of evolution. Frank De Luca, who teaches the Enneagram in San Francisco, says:
‘You learn a lot of compassion and patience because you have a broader understanding of human nature. You see they’re doing the best they can, based on the experiences they had in early life. Your strengths, when overdone, become your weaknesses.’
Looking at our personality is one way to look at how we evolve closer to love from one lifetime to the next, but there is also a shift in our very soul. There are lots of different schools of thought on the soul. Some think it is the feminine of the spirit; others that the soul is a different word for the ‘spirit.’ The way I am using the word, I mean the ‘immortal energy’ or ‘consciousness,’ which I believe lives on after the death of our physical self. The soul is not a ‘thing’ as the ego likes to think in terms of the physical world; the soul is a state of being.
The soul’s path to finding its purpose is to be in connection with spirit, divine nature, the source, or God. This is a simplistic idea, but for simplicity’s sake I believe souls can be split up into soul groups. Some people in the same soul group may be born within each other’s lifetime to actualize each other’s growth. This might be one way of explaining when a parent loses a child or when an amazing relationship ends in disappointment. You may need to reconnect to a beautiful connection, which may or may not be as fulfilling in a physical sense, but is perfect in your non-physical evolution. You might meet a ‘soul mate’ from a past life, but it doesn’t mean the connection is definitely going to work out in this lifetime. Sometimes we simply reconnect in order to open up possibilities and nothing is preordained. These soul groups can be people of all different vibrations; they can be a complete mismatch as well as a match.
Souls can be split into seven frequencies of vibration. The ego would like to put them into a higher to lower sound vibration, from enlightened to dumb. Try and avoid that way of thinking if you can and instead think in terms of a circle. All of the frequencies are already who you are. If you think of yourself as a hot air balloon, how high you go depends on how light you are, so the more baggage you’ve dropped, the better. We are all balloons; just because one balloon can’t go as high as another balloon due to holding onto baggage doesn’t stop that balloon from having the potential to fly. It is a case of letting go of fear and allowing yourself to fly.
Level one souls like a simple life. They may stay in one job or live in one place. They don’t leave what they have for fear of losing it.
Level two souls can see that there is more to life and then start to question and look for answers. They often find religion and will stick to it wholeheartedly, sometimes becoming fanatical.
Level three souls start to wander and will travel and play many roles in life.
Level four souls feel the need to create for others, but often for money or notoriety.
Level five souls feel the world is a terrible place; they feel a sense of disconnection from everyone and everything, sometimes ending their life prematurely as nothing seems to work for them.
Level six souls just want to give to others and will sometimes have trouble with boundaries, but feel a need to spread love.
Level seven souls are immersed in awareness and being.
The souls beyond these numbers are probably not coming back to tell us about it, although I’ve met a few. My ego is absolutely convinced that I am somewhere at the top! But I laugh it off. And on that note, it is always worth remembering we are the balloons not the fear (ego) that keeps us grounded.
Our life’s purpose is about moving up through these frequencies. Removing the blocks we have that prevent us from seeing others and ourselves as loving beings. If you want to keep moving up the ladder, find out your values and stick to them. They become a compass by which you base your truth. Keeping honest to you, not justifying bad actions or making up stories, is the best way to head up the ladder. The voice in your head is a fabulous storyteller, but it’s only our intuition that can tell us if the story is true. Stay curious and questioning of everything that gives you less then lovely emotions. The chances are you have told yourself something somewhere in your past that wasn’t true.
For me, when I step out of my thoughts I find them very funny; and what I find hilarious is when I think they are oh, so very important and then I really laugh. I laugh like a mad woman who has found sanity.
Understanding someone else’s path also means that you are less likely to try and fix other people. You can assist other people on their journey, by being the most loving and authentic person you can be. You can do this by not buying into their story but not discrediting their right to believe it either. Doing more than that means we start to interfere with another person’s freewill, even when we love that person and only want the best for them. Giving someone else your awakened vision, when they haven’t asked for it, is never wise.
A while ago I developed gallstones due to hereditary coeliac disease. Two days before my first ever surgery to have my gallbladder removed, I was confronted by someone telling me that ‘spirit’ was telling them I must not have the operation. That it was my karma, I had something to learn, the surgeon was going to ‘butcher’ me and ‘I could remove the stones later with a liver flush.’ I didn’t mind the opinion, but the problem was someone giving an opinion power by underlining it with ‘We were meant to meet,’ ‘I have been sent to tell you,’ or ‘It’s no coincidence that my bulls**t has found you today.’
The truth is if you want to be a savior, you need to find someone who needs saving. It is often the vulnerable who needs saving. It is the ego that feels great when someone takes our advice. Luckily I didn’t listen to this guy, as my intuition is so strong, I knew there was no getting out of this surgery. It was lucky as it turned out to be a bit more complex on the inside of my body, and if I had followed his weighted opinion I would now be dead. No matter whether you’re intuitive, psychic, a medium, connected to the angels, or dancing with fairies, if you’re alive you have an ego. Even a great mystic has to be skeptical of the voices in their head.
The need to help other people comes from the ego. The need to love other people comes from your loving self. Perhaps by asking me to talk about the surgery, giving an opinion in this way ‘have you thought that maybe you can xyz?’ I would have felt heard and loved. It would have given loving power to me, not disempowered me. However… I still might have wanted to hang him by the socks!
While we’re on the subject, there can be a lot of judgment around ill health, that you somehow manifested it purely from being a negative person. More often than not we learn so much from difficult times, you have to ask yourself, did I manifest a great lesson here? Or did I manifest ill health? It’s often hard to separate the two.
People will often try and pull you into their life dramas, to authenticate why it is impossible for them to find love. If, because you love them, you get pulled into their drama, too, then you are siding with the ego. At some point you will have to pull out and, in doing so, prove the ego right.
The stories we tell ourselves are so important; the words we use and our perception of those words embellish a dramatic tale. My dog stepped out in front of a slow-moving car, I caught her in time and, although she was shaken, she wasn’t hurt. I however went into the drama of ‘she was almost hit by a car!’ and had the same amount of stress as if a car traveling at 30mph had nearly killed her. She was fine, and I realized I was reacting to ‘perceived drama’ and not the real situation. The dog had no idea of what happens when a car hits you so she was over it really quickly. Your take, or even spin, on a story makes the difference between being empowered or disempowered by it.
I was 17 when a boy I really liked kissed me under the boardwalk of the seaside town where I spent my teenage years. When he tried taking it further he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. This could have been the drama where a man tried to rape me, but instead it is the event where I learned the power of fingernails in eyeballs. A few years later, while backpacking in Australia, a man who had escaped a mental institute grabbed me from behind. Afterwards, when the police interviewed me, they cautioned me that running after the man and continuing to attack him could be considered assault and to let the matter go. Would that situation have turned out differently, if I had a different belief about myself? I think so.
You decide your character in the stories of your life. You decide if you are the hero, victim, or survivor. You can even name the chapters in your life differently:
Chapter 1: I Was Born or The Coming of the Chosen One
Chapter 2: My Parents’ Divorce or The End of the War
Chapter 3: I Nearly Died or I Survived
This is why it is so important not to buy into other people’s stories or project your negative story onto other people’s lives. It weakens them. So when someone tells you their plans don’t give them horror stories of how it could all go wrong and don’t buy into the tales of horror that you hear.
My mother was involved in an accident, and afterwards she sat on the settee looking broken. My heart bled for her, and I just wanted to make her feel better. She said ‘This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover.’ ‘WHAT? I’m not buying into that,’ so I pointed out all the things that she had survived, all the amazing things she had done. Her body changed, she sat up a little more and said ‘You’re right… I’m not this victim woman. I’m that survivor woman.’
When a client comes to see me it is often about having limited perception. This is the definition of a block; a block is a holding point while we are stuck with a limited perception of a situation, the world, or ourselves. Blocks in our present perception are often due to what we made our past mean – not what actually happened. So you can see why it is important to know whether you are, for example, a survivor or a victim. Using intuition I look backward to see where the limiting belief started, we then unravel the limiting belief, thus getting life back into flow. The ego needs stories and characters (archetypes), but the truth is if you play a limiting role you will never get a leading part in your life. Someone else will play a tune and you will dance to it.
By becoming intuitively curious about ourselves, we have the chance to understand the story we are being told by other people, and the stories we are telling ourselves. You can feel intuitively when a story isn’t true by analyzing how it has been embellished to give it drama, and then just step out of it.