As we become clearer in our self-awareness, we can begin applying that self-knowledge to the relationships we create. We see that the same reasons why not that we apply to ourselves, we also apply to relationships. We have discussed how to clear our reasons why not to get the desired results in our lives. Now we can learn to do the same thing in terms of relationships. A simple tool to do this with is by using the concept of contracts.
All our relationships with others can be viewed in terms of contracts. Contracts create boundaries that define and maintain acceptable relational behavior patterns. The contract of a relationship is made up of unstated, usually unconscious agreements between people about how they will act with each other, including what they will and won’t say and do. Contracts can be made between two people, or they can be made within or between groups of people, where they are expressed as social norms.
We will concentrate here mostly on contracts between two people. However, everything that will be said can also be applied to contracts between an individual and a group and between groups, no matter how large they are. It also can be applied to your individual and humankind’s relationship to the planet, on which I will focus a bit at the end of this chapter.
Healthy positive relationships are interdependent and have clearly established contracts of honesty, support, and caring between friends. In them there is plenty of room for freedom, creativity, and self-expression, as well as healthy care and concern for each other. These positive contracts promote the growth of each person involved. On the other hand, codependent relationships are created through negative, unhealthy contracts that limit, trap, use, control, and even intimidate the people in them. They block creativity, personal expression, and personal freedom and interfere with the natural personal growth of each person involved.
We all create both positive and negative contracts. Most of the time these contracts are unconscious and work automatically. The areas of our lives that flow smoothly and fulfill us are the areas where we have created positive contracts with others, based on mutual positive beliefs. For example, the experience of working at a task with others in an easy manner that gets the job done is based on a positive contract that states that clear thinking, a willingness to work, and cooperation between individuals work best to accomplish the task. This contract is based on a positive belief, and on the belief that the world is a place that supports such positive mutuality.
In our problem areas, we create negative contracts with others. As we live within a limited view of reality, we adopt certain attitudes, stances in life, and ways of living that help substantiate our limited view. In doing so, we form negative psychological contracts to insure that others will behave in certain ways with us that reflect our limited view of reality. The primary reason for these contracts is to avoid certain feelings and experiences that we do not want to have. With our negative contracts, we freeze our life energies and thus also freeze a lot of creative energy within us.
Underlying a negative contract is not only our fear of life experience but our negative belief about how the world is. Usually this belief is unconscious and stems from childhood trauma. For example, a child whose father severely punishes or abuses her may grow up believing that men are cruel. Her early experience of the man in her life, her father, taught her that. As an adult, she may very well avoid men or have trouble in relationships with them due to her negative expectations. She will set up negative contracts that keep men away, or she will get into relationships with cruel men. These relationships will prove her belief that men are cruel.
Contracts, once set up, are placed in motion and remain in motion. Each time a negative contract is fulfilled, it serves to strengthen the negative attitude about life and reality that it supports. These negative beliefs grow stronger and limit us more in life each time we circle around through another negative experience. The auric configuration that corresponds to them gets more distorted each time. Another way to say this is that a negative contract strengthens a negative thought form or belief.
The energy-consciousness related to a negative belief shows up in the energy field as stagnation and distortions in the seventh level. These distortions slowly get transferred down through the other auric levels. At the relational or fourth level the distortions show up as stagnations or blocks in the field of a single person or as negative auric field interactions between people. Thus a field distortion at level seven, revealing a negative belief system, is transferred down to level four, where it expresses itself as a negative contract through fourth level field interactions with others. The more a negative contract is acted out in relationships, the greater the distortion on the fourth level of the field. The distortions continue to be transferred down through the lower levels of the field until they reach the physical body. Eventually, they are expressed as discomfort and illness in the physical body.
Since both positive and negative contracts work holographically, we habitually make the same type of contract with many people. Any process of healing requires an uncovering and dissolving of all of these negative contracts. As these negative forms or patterns in the auric fields of relationships are cleared through hands-on healing and personal process work, the psychological perspective of negative life stance, negative beliefs, and the actions or behavior patterns they exhibit dissolve and are replaced by positive ones.
First, we will explore how negative contracts come about, look at their format, and discover how to dissolve them. Then we will learn how to create positive contracts with intimate partners, friends, and healthcare professionals.
A typical negative contract starts in childhood between parent and child, especially if there is hardship in the family. Consider the case of Gary, a boy whose mother has to work and is exhausted and preoccupied with money matters when she gets home. She will not be able to give her son what he needs. Gary will do all kinds of things to get her attention. When he finds one that works, he will use it again and probably keep using it as long as it works. He discovers that if he helps her or takes care of her when she feels bad, he gets her attention. He unconsciously confuses this attention with love. Thus he gets the message that he must take care of his mother to get her love. This, of course, is the reverse of how it ought to be. Unconsciously, Gary concludes that if he doesn’t take care of Mom, then he won’t get Mom’s love. Thus he learns that love has a price. After the dynamic is repeated several times, it becomes habitual and continues into adulthood, where it takes the form of unhealthy, exaggerated caretaking. Whenever he gets involved in a relationship with a woman, he always ends up taking care of her in an exaggerated, unhealthy way, be it his wife, his business partner, or an employee. Deep inside, he believes this is necessary in order to get love. Of course, this reason is unconscious. He just knows that every time he gets into a relationship, he takes too much responsibility and gets sucked dry. He then begins to avoid relationships because they are just not worth all the work. This brings him into a vicious cycle of neediness, despair, resentment, and then withdrawal. He will, at times, even choose to isolate himself.
FIGURE 13-1 GARY’S NEGATIVE CONTRACT
The chart in Figure 13-1 helps clarify the steps in the negative contract that Gary habitually sets up. Remember that the caretaking in this negative contract is exaggerated caretaking. It is taking care of an adult when he or she doesn’t need it, as if he or she were a child. The first column is labeled “If I Do/Don’t.” This refers to the actions that Gary unconsciously believes he must do in order to get what he needs. In this case, he believes he must take care of his mother, or any other woman with whom he is involved. The type of caretaking is all-inclusive, as if his mother or the other woman were a child. He takes responsibility for her and her life, as if she couldn’t. Therefore in column one we put: If I do take care of Mom.
The second column, labeled “He/She Will/Won’t,” is for the results Gary believes he will get if he follows his unconscious belief. In this case, he believes he will get Mom’s or another woman’s love. We put: She will love me.
The third column, labeled “Unconscious Belief,” is for Gary’s unconscious belief about what he has to do in order to get what he wants: I have to take care of Mom in order to get her to love me.
The “Immediate Price” in column four is the short-term price Gary pays because his belief is erroneous. He not only has to take care of Mom or the woman in his life, he doesn’t even get her love that way: I take care of Mom, but I don’t get her love.
Column five, labeled “Supported Negative Belief,” is for the broader negative unconscious belief that this proves through experience. For Gary, it is: Relationships suck energy and don’t really fill my needs.
Column six, labeled, “Other Areas of Life Affected,” is for the holographic effect of the broader negative unconscious belief in other parts of life: I pay for love everywhere in other forms, e.g., by giving money, gifts, personal time.
The last column, labeled “True Price,” gives the results on the personal, psychological level for this unconscious belief. It gives the long-term effects on Gary’s life. All the giving doesn’t buy the love he was seeking to get in the first place. He may get attention and praise, but he will never get love. This causes disappointment, disillusionment, and a lot of resentment about relationships. He concludes: I am tired from this burden. I avoid relationships. The price is too high.
Gary is pretty unhappy by this time. His feelings probably fluctuate between being burdened and resentful and going into isolation. It is possible to get caught in a vicious cycle between exaggerated caretaking and isolation for many years.
To get out of this vicious cycle, Gary must take the chance of challenging his negative belief and facing the results he fears. He must reverse the behavior that is dictated by his unconscious belief. If he continues his caretaking long enough, he may get mad enough to stop being such a nice guy and stop the exaggerated caretaking of the women in his life—be they Mom, his wife, business partner, employee, sister, or friend. Most likely, more than one woman is involved here. He has developed this type of relationship with most of the women he knows. He may just start with one. But if he is successful, he will be able to transform his negative belief and his resultant actions in all the areas of his life affected by it. He will be surprised to see what the results turn out to be.
FIGURE 13-2 POSITIVE RESULTS FROM DISSOLVING GARY’S NEGATIVE CONTRACT
Now let’s use Figure 13-2 to dissolve Gary’s old negative contract and create a healthy relationship with Mom and the other women in his life. The first column, labeled “If I Do/Don’t,” is for the reverse action that Gary will not take. In this case it is: If I don’t take care of Mom.
The second column, labeled “He/She Will/Won’t,” is for the feared result when the action is reversed. In this case his fear is: She will not love me.
Gary’s mother may complain at first. She may become more needy and demand the old status quo. Gary may fear that she will leave him or get sick. He may also feel bad about himself for a while. Usually this is not real, because the kind of exaggerated caretaking he has been doing is not what she needs. Of course, when someone is ill, the line between healthy and unhealthy caretaking is different and may be more difficult to find. (We will address this in the next section, “Creating Healthy Relationships with Your Family and Friends.”) In the long run, all will work out. It will turn out that Gary’s mom still loves him, even if he doesn’t take care of her in the old unhealthy way. The third column, the “True Result” for breaking a negative contract, shows how well things turned out! In this case: Mom still loves me. I don’t have to buy her love!
At first, Gary may not believe that it is true and will have to test it for a while. He will go back and forth between unhealthy and healthy caretaking. As he learns the difference between the two, he will find a new world opening up. He will see that his mother still loves him as he goes through the process of sorting his life out. Since she still loves him even though he is not taking care of her in the old unhealthy way, his life experience now supports a new positive belief. It is listed in the fourth column, under “Positive Belief Supported.” He understands that: I am lovable; love has no price.
Gary understands that you really can’t make anyone love you, no matter what you do. Love flows naturally from people who can love. It is a gift of life. Now the release begins. It snowballs into all the other areas of his life. He is also lovable in those areas, and love can’t be bought nor need it be. This is shown in column five, “Other Areas of Life Affected.” Gary figures out: I no longer have to buy love anywhere.
Gary has stopped buying love anywhere in his life because he knows he deserves it. He will not have to isolate himself anymore. He is now free to make relationships because they will no longer be a burden to him. He will be able to get his needs met in the relationships. Instead of the cycle of exaggerated caretaking, resenting, and isolating himself from his mother, he now freely gives love. There is a beautiful flow of love between him and the women in his life. Column six, “Positive Results to Me,” shows the results for Gary, now relieved of his burden: I give and receive more love and create fulfilling relationships.
This has immediate wonderful positive effects for all the women in Gary’s life. He no longer takes care of them in an unhealthy way. This leaves him free to love them. This challenges them to take their power and to take care of themselves. They also now get love rather than caretaking as a substitute for it. The women in his life now have the choice to also dissolve their side of the contract to stay in the relationship or to break the relationship. Column seven lists “Positive Results to Other.” In this case, what the mother will most likely do is find real love within herself: Mom stands on her own two feet. She gets love rather than service. So do all the other women in his life.
FIGURE 13-3 CHART FOR CLARIFYING YOUR NEGATIVE CONTRACT
Wow, what a deal! It’s good for everyone! Of course, this works for a girl whose father is both caretaker and provider as well.
You will need to change your interactions within the many intimate relationships you have. So during your healing process, you will find yourself changing friendships, some perhaps more substantially than others. If you learn how to distinguish what these contracts are, dissolving or breaking them and making new contracts will be smoother. The more conscious you are of this process, the less likely you will be to establish negative contracts again.
Have you noticed that in order to be with certain people, you have to play a certain role or be a certain way? This is the first sign of a negative contract. On the other hand, there are people with whom you can be yourself completely. You don’t have to hide anything or convince them of anything. Yet you know that they will honestly tell you whatever they think of a given situation, even if you don’t like it. That is a sign of a positive contract.
To check out your relationships, build a chart using Figure 13-3, like the one we used in Figure 13-1. This chart can show your negative contract. You can use it to observe any relationship you are in, whether it be a long-term relationship or a new one. I suggest you start with a particularly difficult relationship, with which you are having trouble. Choose the type of relationship in which you are uncomfortable, and find yourself acting in ways you don’t like. Perhaps you are not even aware of these actions when you are in the presence of the person, but after he/she leaves, you are left with an uneasy or bad feeling. You may not know what is wrong, but you do know that something is wrong. Review how you acted with the person that is different from how you are in the presence of people with whom you are comfortable. What are you doing differently? That action is the action that you unconsciously believe you must do in order to get what you need from this person. Write your false action in the first column, labeled “If I Do/Don’t.”
To find out why you do such actions, you must find your underlying emotion. Usually it is fear. What are you afraid the person will or won’t do if you do not act according to your negative belief? To find this fear, imagine yourself in the typical situation with the person with whom you are having trouble. Now imagine yourself doing an action opposite to the one you think you have to do. In your imagination, watch what the other person does in reaction to your action. List whatever you imagine they would do in column two, “He/She Will/Won’t.”
Now you understand that if you stop your false actions, you are afraid that the other person will do whatever is listed in column two. Therefore your false actions are to control the other person’s behavior. They show what you believe you have to do in order to get the person to do what you want. Column three is for your “Unconscious Belief.” It reflects the immediate result that you will have if you both keep your negative contract. Fill it in: If I do/don’t (your false action? then he/she will/won’t (his/her imagined behavior toward you).
For example, suppose that it is someone that you are afraid to contradict, disagree with, or challenge. You might write: If I do not challenge (name), he/ she will support me. Or: If I do challenge (name), he/she will not support me. Or he/she will undermine me, perhaps publicly.
In another example, you are ill, and you are ashamed or afraid to ask for your needs to be met with your partner. You have been the caretaker, and now the tables are turning. Your partner just wants you to hurry up and get back to normal. But you have very real needs: If I do not ask for (what you need), he/she will be nice to me. Or: If I do ask for (what you need), he/she will be angry.
The next column is for the price you pay for this result. What is the effect on you of doing your false action, for not being who you naturally are? How have you not expressed yourself? How have you not been who you are? List what you find in column four, “Immediate Price.”
In the first example, we have: If I do not challenge (name of person), I do not speak my truth or act the way I believe. I do not express who I am. I do not create the power in myself that comes from living my truth. If I do not challenge (name of person), I will not be challenged back, and I will not give myself the opportunity to find out what needs to be changed inside me. In the second example, we have: If I do not ask for my needs when I am sick, I may get sicker.
Because of these lacks in your life, you begin to see and feel yourself in a false way. You begin to believe you are less than who you truly are. Your false actions limit your expression, and you believe that the limited you is the real you. What do you think about yourself when you do this? How has this action stifled your creativity? Your life experience? Your life task?
If you relate to the first example above, you may see yourself as a coward. As a coward, you do not express your creativity because you are afraid someone will be challenged by it and undermine or attack you publicly. By not expressing your creativity, you do not create your life’s dream. If you relate to the second example above, you may be disgusted with yourself for being sick. You may feel that you are a burden to everyone. You begin to believe that the world is a world that supports the falsely limited you. What is the general negative belief that says the world is a place where the above limitations are good to have? In column five, list the “Supported Negative Belief,” or thought form, that you give energy to every time you do this false action.
In the first example, the supported basic negative belief would go something like this: Expressing my truth and my creativity is dangerous and leads to public attack. In the second example, the supported basic negative belief is something like: When I have needs or am sick, people will be angry. I must never get sick. Having needs is dangerous.
Your negative belief hampers you holographically throughout your entire life. List all the “Other Areas of Life Affected” in column six.
If you relate to the first example, you may avoid challenge in many areas and many other ways in your life. You may avoid self-challenge. You may block your creativity everywhere whenever it is challenged. If you relate to the second example, you probably do not ask for your needs in many or all other areas of your life.
The price you pay is not just the immediate short-term price shown in column four. The true price is that your negative contract or negative belief limits you in all areas of your life and keeps your life from moving forward. List the “True Price” in the seventh column.
If you relate to the first example, the true price may be a life that is void of challenge, and therefore stagnant, dull, and unfulfilling. If you relate to the second example, the true price may be a life of unmet needs and deprivation. You may not even know what real needs are. You may not understand the needs of others.
On the other hand, if you break the negative contract, then you will probably not like the reaction of your friend or the immediate result you will get. But in the long run it really pays off. Make another chart, using Figure 13-4, to show the results of breaking your negative contract. (It will be like Gary’s, in Figure 13-2.)
The first column is “If I Do/Don’t.” Fill it in. The second column is “He/She Will/Won’t,” the feared price. It is the price you believe you would have to pay and are hoping to avoid paying. Fill it in.
In our first example, we have: If I do challenge (name), he/she will not support me or he/she will undermine me, perhaps publicly. In our second example we have: If I do ask for (what you need), he/she will be angry.
Now it is time to pay up. You don’t want any debts carried over into your new way of being. You will be surprised at what the price turns out to be. Try doing your true action rather than your false action just to see what happens. Your true action may be the opposite of your false action, but not necessarily. You may find an even better one! Column three, labeled “True Results,” refers to the actual result that occurs. Fill it in.
FIGURE 13-4 POSITIVE RESULTS FROM DISSOLVING YOUR NEGATIVE CONTRACT
In our first example, your true action may be the opposite of your false action: you challenge the person you are afraid to disagree with. You state your opinion about something that may be directly opposed to his/ hers. You do not need to do this in a combative way. Simply state your opinion without a negative energy charge. The person may do many different things. He/ she may challenge you back, and you may have a lively discussion in which you both learn a great deal by listening to each other and by explaining what you are trying to communicate in several different ways. You will find that the situation is not as black and white as your inner child believes it to be. If the person does undermine you publicly, then you also challenge that. If you continue to speak your truth and be open-minded, you will learn a great deal and feel your power. Your creativity will be released through the challenge that you have given to yourself by doing this in the first place. You will learn through interaction. Therefore, the “True Result” is: I can challenge (name of person) and be safe, and even learn something!
In the first example, the feared price is not only the counterchallenge of the person you were afraid to challenge. You will also face the possibility of public undermining. You will be challenged to distinguish between true reality and your projection of reality that comes from your negative belief system.
If you try our second example of asking for your needs when sick, you will be surprised that the person you ask will respond differently from what you expected. He/she may be very attentive to you. He/she may need to be reminded of what you need. He/she may immediately begin to think of other needs you have that need to be filled. He/she may become resentful if you are sick for a long time. But if you keep talking, you will both find solutions. You will begin to understand and know your needs in a different way. You will find that they are reasonable human needs. Therefore the “True Result” for our second example is: When I ask, my needs get met.
Column four is for the “Positive Belief Supported” through your new actions. Fill it in. To get an idea of what it could be, check out our two examples. For our first example, the positive belief that is supported is: The world is a place of truth. Truth is safe, builds power, and opens creativity. For our second example, the positive belief supported could be stated as: My needs are natural human needs. I can know what they are, ask for help, and get them met. The world is a place in which needs are natural and can be filled.
In column five, list the “Other Areas of Life Affected” by the positive belief that you have supported through your new actions and that challenge your fear. You will find that all parts of your life are affected. In our first example, if you began to challenge someone you did not challenge before, you probably will begin to challenge all parts of your life and the people in them in ways that you have not done before. You will challenge yourself to live in your truth and be more creative in all aspects of your life. In the second example, you will begin asking not only for what you need, but for what you want. You will be able to distinguish between the two. You will most likely do this in all areas of your life.
The “Positive Results to Me” (in column six) will be vast. If you relate to our first example, you will gain more self-confidence, more freedom, and more creativity in your life by taking on more challenges. You will greatly improve your self-esteem. In the second example, you will find more nurturance and fulfillment in your life as you learn more about your true needs and how to fill them. You will also learn about what you want and be able to go for it.
In the last column, list the “Positive Results to Other.” How have others benefited from your changing your behavior? List the benefits to others in the last column. In our first example, the first person to benefit from your changed behavior besides you may be the person whom you challenge. This challenge will help them grow if they wish to, because they can learn a great deal about themselves from it. Your immediate family will benefit from your increased power and creativity because you will not only challenge them to go for theirs but will set an example for them. Of course, you will probably challenge them on their habitual patterns also!
In our second example, the person whom you ask to help you fill your needs will immediately be given a chance to express his/her loving and giving. He/she may be challenged to find out how much he/she is able to give and love and find greater depths of love within. He/she will also learn how to communicate better, through the give-and-take of caring for someone who is ill. If he/she has not already done so, he/she will also learn how to recognize and fill his/her own needs. He/she will also learn how to ask for what he/she wants, because you are a model for learning to fill needs.
The more negative contracts you break in this way, the more freedom, creativity, and power you will have—and the safer you will feel. Once you have released yourself into a new way of being, your positive belief system will be activated. This will spread throughout your life holographically. You may be very surprised at the tremendous positive effects of breaking your negative contracts, not only on yourself, but on the person with whom you were holding them. Breaking such contracts frees a great deal of creative energy that you will now be able to use in your life in other areas. It will enhance your personal healing process a great deal. It will also free creative energy in your friend’s life.
Some friends may insist on keeping the old contract. Since you will not keep it, that friendship may dissolve with the contract. Your old friend may find another person who is willing to make the old contract. Let go and let God. Your old friends will face those changes in their lives when they are ready. There are no judgments about this—everyone must be free to change and grow at their own pace. This may also happen in intimate relationships. It is, of course, much more difficult to lose an intimate relationship, but it does happen when people change rapidly.
In such cases, when grief for that old friendship or intimate relationship arises within you, it is helpful to remember that love and learning are always created in every kind of relationship. That which always remains from friendships and intimate relationships is the love. It is only the negative that dissolves. The pain and the distortion dissolve through time and through learning. The love that was created always remains and is never diminished. When your old friend goes through the necessary change in his or her life, you may happen to meet again and find the friendship rekindled. The love will still be there.
If you are ill and moving through the healing process, you will transform many old negative contracts with friends and your intimate partner. You will find that those people who will agree to the change in your mutual contract will also grow through the stages of healing with you. As you move through and transform each of the seven levels (as discussed in Chapter 8), you bring the people involved with you to a higher view of the entire process. When you go through deep changes in your life, so will the people around you. Their lives will change.
It is very important to create positive contracts with your health-care professionals. The purpose of such a positive contract is to clarify your needs, find the right qualified people to help you fill them, and to carefully create a trustful, safe environment in which you will be able to do your work and surrender to the process of healing and to the wisdom and help coming from the health-care professionals you have chosen. The more carefully this is done the better, because at some time during the process, you will be required to trust, let go, and live by faith and hope. Be sure that you draw the right people to you and create the appropriate place and situation in which to do that.
Before entering into a relationship with a health-care professional, I suggest that you do the work in the previous section about your personal relationships. This will give you information about the structure of any negative contract that you might automatically, unconsciously set up with your health-care professional. You will then find it easier to go through the material that follows. Utilizing the information given in this chapter and in Chapter 12, let us use some important questions as guidelines to set up positive healing relationships with your healer, your physician, and any other health-care professional whose services you may wish to engage. The object is to create the best client-healer-physician team that you can. You can also use these guidelines if you wish to use a nutritionist, a therapist, or any other health-care professional.
If you are too ill to do this by yourself, then get someone to help you go through it. If, on the other hand, you are caring for someone, like a family member, who is too ill to work on this at all, then try to do it from the information you know about them. It will be a big help.
Use the chart in Figure 12-1, as you did in Chapter 12, to answer these questions.
Points to check out about yourself to make sure you are clear about which belief system you are coming from and what you need:
What is my desired result?
What is my reason why not—why I have not obtained this desired result before?
What is the fear I have avoided that I will have to face?
Upon what negative belief system is that fear based?
Your half of any negative contract with another person will always be based on your negative belief system. You will find that the negative belief system you list is one that is familiar to you. You use it in many areas of your life. You have probably already come up against it in doing the exercises in this chapter that explore negative contracts in relationships. You probably related to the two examples given. They are very apropos to the healing relationship. The first example says it is dangerous to challenge someone who disagrees with you. It is based upon the negative belief that the universe is not a place that supports the truth or the truth-finding process, or more personally said: Expressing my truth and my creativity is dangerous.
If this negative belief is operating within you when you interact with a health-care professional, you will have difficulty standing up for what you believe. If you do not like the attitude or stance that your health-care professionals take with regard to you and your healing process, you probably won’t challenge them. You will refrain from expressing your doubts about the plan they are presenting to you. You will probably refrain from expressing your creative ideas about healing yourself. Unfortunately, such concerns, doubts, and creative ideas may be the key to your healing process.
If you wish to move through your healing process with the attitude of increasing your self-awareness and finding your truth each step of the way, then you need to get help from someone who is willing to work in that way. It can’t be someone who simply tells you how it must be. You must find someone to work with who will lay out the healing plan on the table and speak with you openly about it. You need to know what your choices are and what consequences come with those choices, as best as any health-care professional can tell you. Many, many physicians are willing to do this now with an open heart.
Discerning whether a plan is right for you and challenging one that is not right for you will be much easier if you are clear that the positive belief system that you are coming from says that the universe supports truth, truth-finding, and the expression of creativity in problem-solving. The more you center yourself into this reality before you need to make a decision, the clearer you will be about making a decision when one is required of you.
In the second example above, to which you may have related, the supported basic negative belief is something like: When I have needs or am sick, people will be angry. I must never get sick. Having needs is dangerous.
Obviously this will interfere a great deal with your healing process and with your relationships with your health-care professionals. They will be much too busy to try to figure out what all your needs are. Nor could they, if they even had the time. It is up to you to begin to understand that you have real adult needs and that your needs are greater if you are ill than if you are not. It is perfectly reasonable to get help to fill them. If you know that you have a tendency not to ask for your needs to be met, you must concentrate on centering into the positive belief that we live in a world where everyone has natural human needs and where needs can be met. Therefore, you can ask your health-care professionals to fill these needs. Even if you are embarrassed, it is better to ask. If they cannot fill them, or if they feel that it is inappropriate to do so, you are still on the path to getting them filled. You can keep asking until you find the appropriate person to fill them.
Asking for what you need and challenging aggressive treatment modes for a life-threatening illness is very, very difficult. It requires clarity about where you are coming from. For example, nobody wants chemotherapy; nobody wants radiation. But is your resistance to it coming from the commitment to ask for what you need and stand up for your truth to heal yourself in a way that is right for you? Or is it a way to avoid a very unpleasant treatment and to thus stay in denial? These are the questions that many people face. They are not easy. Knowing on which belief system you tend to base your actions will come in very handy at such a time.
If you tend never to challenge, you probably ought to start. If, on the other hand, you are the sort of person that challenges everyone on everything, you are probably coming from a negative belief system that says people are not trustworthy. In this case, such actions would probably be detrimental to your healing. The big question is, are you coming out of love or fear? If it is not love, try again.
There are many variations on what I call the games people play with health-care professionals. Many patients want physicians or healers to be more than human, to have no flaws, and to take full responsibility for their health. For example, a negative belief system that supports not being able to ask for your needs to be met has its reverse side, in which the physician or healer is supposed to be all-knowing and all-caring. There is a part in everyone that wants to revert to the womb, where all needs are automatically cared for without their asking. But that is not the real world. Everyone is limited. Every one of us is human.
Be aware that health-care professionals’ knowledge is necessarily limited. The knowledge of medicine is limited. Although it is very advanced scientifically, it knows much less than there is to know. After all, it was and still is being formulated by people who are simply trying to learn as much as they can within a certain framework of knowledge. So it is with healing. Healing is a path of knowledge that interfaces with the way of knowledge of medicine, and there are many paths of healing. Neither medicine nor healing can take responsibility away from the person who is born into that body in the first place. You always were and always will be responsible for your body.
As a teacher of healing, I run into this a lot from those who come to study with me. Since I am able to read the field and see into the body, some students think that that means I automatically read everything about their health whenever they are in one of my classes. I have had several people get angry at me because I didn’t warn them ahead of time about something that showed up in their yearly physician’s checkup. Once these people get over the initial shock, they find that they are actually avoiding knowing things about the workings of their own body. This avoidance is usually based on our fear of the human condition in which we live as vulnerable physical beings.
However, in the long run, the more we maintain our natural body-centered consciousness, the more we are able to follow the messages from our balancing system and keep it healthy on a daily basis. This is very empowering. With our balancing system, we remain awake to what is going on in our physical habitat as much as possible. Therefore the person (ourselves) who can do the most about it has first alert. We are always there inside the body!
Doing this makes a big difference. For example, I mentioned a case in an earlier chapter about healing back pain. I found it necessary for the client to carry small healthy snacks to maintain a good level of blood sugar so that he would not reinjure his back. This worked very well for him. He became much more conscious of what was going on in his body minute to minute. By being present and responding to his own need over time, he then healed his back. A female client with whom I was working at the same time refused to do this. She didn’t want to maintain a high level of body awareness. She didn’t eat what and when she needed to maintain her blood sugar level to prevent injury. She kept reinjuring herself. She had deeper issues of self-responsibility that she needed to deal with before reaching this practical way of handling the problem.
Once you have done the work in this chapter to find the types of negative contracts that you set up with people, you can check out how you might set up the same types of negative contracts with your health-care professionals. Consider the examples here, then ask yourself these four additional questions:
What negative contracts have I set up in the past that I may unknowingly use with my health-care professionals?
What is the positive belief system out of which I will now allow my actions to arise? (You will want it supported by whomever you choose to work with.)
What do I need from my healer, physician, or healthcare professional to help create the desired result?
What simple mantra that expresses this positive belief can I find to use anytime? (For example, you could use a simple one-word mantra such as health, creativity, peace, truth, ask, challenge, abundance, pleasure, or love. You can use this mantra any time during the day. If you like to be precise, simply think of it a few times on the hour of every hour, or when you get up in the morning or go to bed. You could use it in a formal meditation, where you sit quietly with your spine erect and aligned. Or simply lie in bed and concentrate on one or two simple words that mean a lot to you.)
Now that you know what you need, you can apply it to the various health-care professionals you chose in Chapter 12. Create an imaginary contract with each. Be clear on what you want from each. This process will continue as you gather more information. You will definitely need a different contract for your healer from the one you have with your physician. Review Chapters 5 and 6 before you create the contracts. Remember, the more you do this before you get sick, the easier it will be if you do get sick. Do it as a preventive healthcare measure to maintain your health now, and it will be that much easier to create healing relationships with those whose help you request if you do get ill. If you need help to clarify the process, do not hesitate to ask someone who will understand what you are doing.
Since most health-care professionals do not set up preliminary interviews, you will most likely not be able to present your ideas until your first appointment with a physician or your first session with a healer. Make sure that you do this during the initial part of the appointment. After a healing it will be too late. You will be in an altered state, and most likely it will not be appropriate to talk much.
Points to check out with your health-care professional to make sure you can create a positive contract with him or her:
Is he or she willing to give you the type of information you want, in as detailed a manner as you require to fill your need? (Be sure he or she describes choices of treatment plans.)
Is the person clear and honest about what he or she can give you and what his or her limitations are?
From what belief system is he or she working? Is it similar to the one that you wish to support? (This one may be too difficult to answer. If so, just skip it for now—it will eventually show itself.)
Do you both agree on the desired result?
What does the person want from you? What are your responsibilities to carry out the healing process?
Once you have set up your healing team, make sure someone makes a schedule of the many things that will need to be done and the help you will need in doing them—like going to appointments and getting someone to do your shopping so that you can maintain your diet. Get your friends to help you create your healing space. Be sure to have alone time, just for you to get to know yourself better.
There is a holographic relationship between your personal healing and the healing of the earth. Many of us are concerned about the great deal of pain on the earth today. We want to know how we specifically have helped to create it and how we personally can help to heal it. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, everything that has been said about individual relationships can be applied to our relationship to the earth. Collectively, our negative contracts show in our treatment of our planet. On the personal level, any negative contracts that you have found operating in your personal relationships are also functioning holographically in your relationship to the earth.
It is on the fourth level of our field that we connect to the earth and create relationships with the earth like those we create with each other. From the auric perspective, the earth is a live sentient being, and we are part of its body. This idea makes sense in the M-3 metaphysics. Since all matter is created from mind or consciousness, then consciousness created the physical body of the earth. The physical earth, then, just like our bodies, arose out of the consciousness that created it. Just as our consciousness is connected to our body through the auric field, so the earth has consciousness that connects to it through the earth’s auric field. Some of the earth’s aura is known through our study of the magnetosphere and the Van Allen belts, which are parts of the earth’s magnetic field. Many of you have seen the magnificent colors of the Northern Lights, which look very similar to the human aura.
Since our bodies are part of the earth, we are holographically connected to the earth. We are born out of it, and it is our mother. Native Americans honor this connection and maintain a humble respect for our dependence upon the earth.
Many people of our present culture like to forget our dependence upon the earth and our interconnections to all the beings that live upon it. We act as if we own it; indeed, we even believe we do own pieces of it. I thought Crocodile Dundee put it straight when he said in the movie, “It’s rather like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog they live on.” Much of our mistreatment of the earth comes from our personal pain, which our negative beliefs keep re-creating. Collectively, we hold ourselves in this pain, and collectively, we mistreat the earth.
Since we have learned from holographic theory that everything we do affects everything there is, then we must somehow, in perhaps some small way, be responsible for what is happening on the earth today. After all, the smaller system within the greater system is directly connected to and immediately affects that greater system. Such a thought is overwhelming to most of us. We have quite a lot to deal with in our own lives without taking on planetary problems. Many people turn away from the immensity of the problems humanity as a whole faces now.
To deal with such an issue, someone once asked Heyoan, “What can I do for world peace?” The channeled answer I received not only clarified how we help create the problem but also gave a way for us to do our part without feeling so overwhelmed that we turn away.
Essentially what Heyoan said is that just as you hold negative belief systems that create pain in your life, you also help hold that negative belief system in the collective unconsciousness of humankind, out of which humanity’s pain arises.
Here is the channeled answer and the step-by-step process to find your appropriate area of service.
WHAT CAN I PERSONALLY DO FOR WORLD PEACE?
Channeled from Heyoan
This is a wonderful question, and I hope that more people will ask it of themselves. It is becoming more and more important that larger numbers of people begin taking responsibility for becoming world citizens. The first step toward that end is to consider yourself from the greater vantage point, and let your decisions and actions arise out of that broader knowing.
From our vantage point, since you are joint creators of the earth and all that exists there, you have made it as it is. You have created all that you experience in your life, and when there is pain, it is there only because you have made it so. This does not mean that you are bad; it simply means that you have not learned a lesson you have come here to learn, and so you have created a situation that not only arises out of that unknowing but that gives you precisely the tools that you need and the direction to look to in order to incorporate that learning.
Take our perspective and apply it to the world situation. First ask yourself the questions you would ask concerning any personal issues. What does this world situation mean to me personally?
What is the message the greater world (being a mirror to the self) is trying to tell me about what I need to learn? What is the nature of the pain I have helped to create? What needs to be done about it, and what is it that I can personally do? How have I personally contributed to the greater situation?
Now you might say, “I didn’t do it.” You might even blame others—“It was the politicians”—or you might choose some other nation or ethnic group to blame. But it is you who have participated in an election or refrained from voting. It is you who have carried prejudices within yourself regarding others who seem different from yourself. You do it with complete strangers as well as with people you know. These generalizations and assumptions that you make about others, you also automatically and often unconsciously place on yourself. This causes you a great deal of inner personal pain. When you hear yourself speaking negatively about another, ask yourself what effect it has on you when you say it about yourself.
The longings of the human soul do not limit themselves to national boundaries, languages, or creeds. But with these distinctions, the soul finds an appropriate classroom (or playground) in which to learn. It is precisely this variety that makes the earth such a wonderful choice for incarnation. Nations were created to bring diversity and excitement to your lives. They were never meant to be a battleground. Indeed, one could live many lives upon the earth in many environments and never get bored.
So what has happened? The things that brought you to earth for your schooling are precisely the things that cause the problems. Fundamentally, your belief in a separated reality beckons you to return each time to earth. That belief also causes you fear. So you have come here to dissolve fear, but it is through the fear that needs dissolving that you have brought more fear. So ask yourself: “Precisely what is it that I am afraid of, both in my personal life and on the world scale?” See how they are really the same fear. Do you know that these fears are precisely the same fears most humans have, and from which most humans act? These common fears, then, are the origin of world conflict.
You all fear loss, illness, death, and lack of freedom. You all fear that someone will take something of value away from you once you have established it in your life. But I tell you, the only person who can do that is you.
To the extent that you take away your own personal freedom out of fear, to that same extent you will try to take away another’s freedom. To the extent that you create illness in your body, to that exact extent you would allow others to maintain it in theirs and stand aside offering no help. To the extent you create impoverishment of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual nourishment in your life, to that extent you can tolerate impoverishment in others and even hope for company. As you have done it unto yourselves, so you have done it unto others.
So the first place to create world peace is at home. Create harmony at home, in the office, and in the community, and then extend it across national boundaries. Would you let your child go hungry? Then why let the next-door neighbors, the African, or the Indian go hungry? Wherever you draw the line is where you have limited yourself: your self-definition, your love, and your power.
I recommend that you each devote ten percent of your time and energy to a private project for the purpose of bringing about world peace. This may be in the area of education, political activity, communication, or simply monetary contribution to a cause with which you are profoundly connected. Do this only from the perspective that you have helped create the situation as it is and therefore intend to heal it as the healer that you are and from the power available to you as co-creator. Thus, rather than working for world peace because you should, you will work because you want to. Rather than working out of fear or guilt, you will work from the point of view of a creator putting his or her work in order. Never, never approach world peace from the point of view that you are nearly powerless to do anything about it. That simply is not and never will be true. You are the co-creator of all you experience, including the world situation. If you do not like what you have created, find the lessons to be learned from your imperfect creations and recreate in another, more suitable way.
If you fear poverty, then your actions arising out of that fear—trying to stop personal poverty—will help create poverty on a world scale. Your fear helps maintain the mass belief in poverty. This mass belief in poverty causes a backlash reaction in which everyone strives to get more and to keep it for themselves. This greed leads to the struggle for economic gain that has, in turn, brought about the impoverishment of the world’s resources. This creates more poverty and holds it in place in the physical world.
Consider this, my friends: The things you most abhor and fear are the very things that you create. Thus, not only are you to delve into your belief in your personal poverty and what that means to you, you are to take ten percent of your time to look into world poverty. The world solution will be the same as the personal one.
Greed is based on the fear of not having enough. What appears to be greed is really a result of fear of poverty. That, in turn, creates poverty, which in turn leads to the destruction of the earth’s resources and challenges your very existence. Ultimately, therefore, your fear of poverty covers your existential fear, and ultimately, your greed rests upon the shaky foundation of your deeper existential fear.
Now, what can be said of this greed? Greed is a term you may never wish to apply to yourself. Let us soften it a little: If you look within, you find many “wants.” Make a list of your “wants.” You will find that many of them are designed to make you feel safe, which they can never do. Now ask yourself, “Which of these wants do I wish to create from my higher consciousness, based on my positive belief system? Which do I want to create to make myself feel safe, based on my negative belief system?” Divide the list in this way. Now focus on the positive list and ask yourself, “How does each of my wants serve the world as well as my personal self?” When that is completed, address each item designed to assuage fear and ask, “What fear am I trying to assuage, and how? If I act according to these wants, how will my actions affect the world?” As you know from the previous material, basically you are acting out Homework from Heyoan of and thereby affirming fear in the world by following through with such action. Note that as you do this, you may find that some of the items are on the wrong list.
This exercise may give you a better understanding of just how responsible you are for creating not only your life experience but the world situation as well. You are very responsible! You have in fact a big effect!
So, dear ones, be aware of the very direct effect your belief system has both on your personal relationships and on the world situation. Because of this powerful direct effect, you can change both by discovering your negative belief systems and changing them to project love, caring, and trust into the world. Be in peace and in love.
Consider the person who is gluttonous because he fears starvation. He may overeat and even hoard food. Such a person helps hold the fear of starvation in the collective unconscious of the human race. When he works on his problem, he may choose to give by helping feed those on the planet who are starving.
A friend of mine I will call Mark did just this. He was overweight at the time I met him. I knew nothing about his background. But I knew he was very con cerned about his weight and the health problems it caused. He was particularly concerned about the extra strain on his heart. He had worked on this problem in the past by going on diets of various sorts, losing a few pounds, and then immediately regaining the weight. He had to go into the deeper issues involved with his weight before he could lick the problem. He went to a healer to get help to stop his overeating. He shared his process of healing with me. He has given me permission to write about it.
Mark discovered that the first level of fear within him was simply the fear of hunger. He could not tolerate the inner feeling of hunger. This was a surprise to him, and he had no idea where such a fear would have come from. It certainly wasn’t a reality in his life. He searched for where the fear of hunger came from and found that his parents had had terrible financial problems at the time of his birth, during the Great Depression of the late thirties. Although they were always worried about where the next meal was coming from, nobody ever went hungry. He had found the source of his fear of hunger. His early family heritage carried a fear of hunger, although it never happened. As a young child, he thereby learned that this unknown thing called hunger was a terrible thing to be feared. His young psyche could not distinguish between fantasy and reality. His early childhood solution was simply never to be hungry. It worked, but he gained weight.
In Mark’s healing process, he began to practice tolerance of the fear of hunger by eating good healthy meals and cutting out his nearly constant eating throughout the day. Improving his diet in this way immediately increased his energy level and his level of self awareness. What was different about this process was that his motive was deeper than just the loss of weight, as it had been in his earlier dieting. It had become an exploration of his inner world.
At times, the fear would be too great, so he would have a snack. In this way he worked gently with himself. As he continued to explore his experience of the feeling of hunger, he found that he could begin to distinguish between the feeling of hunger and the feeling of inner emptiness. He found that he even enjoyed the feeling of inner emptiness because it gave him plenty of room inside. It was peaceful. It was just life without form. Now and then something new would arise out of his inner life without form. Many times, he experienced high spiritual ecstasy.
Then other things started coming out of this inner void. As he was sitting one day in the inner quiet, he experienced the rising feeling of the fear of starving to death. Then it broke full force. Quickly, he found himself in the middle of the experience of starving to death. It was another century. He was in a different body and a different life. He jumped up from his meditation in fear. Later in his healing session, he told his healer what had happened. Together during the healing they rolled backward in time to the past life experience that had arisen in his consciousness. The healer worked to clear his auric field of the auric debris left from that experience. He experienced himself living in a time of great hunger. According to his experience, he had actually helped cause this hunger through misuse of power. He and many others eventually lost family and life through starvation.
Of course, in this case, there is no way of proving that such a thing really did happen to him. But there are some very well-organized studies that support his experience, for instance, one by Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, who is verifying past life information from very young children. At any rate, our main focus here is on the healing effect of clearing this experience from Mark’s auric field. First he lost his fear of hunger and starvation. Then he changed his life a great deal.
As Mark said:
When my energy field cleared, I finally understood that my fear was from something that had already happened rather than something that was going to happen. I then had a very overwhelming desire to stop the possibility of it happening again. I saw the mistakes I had made last time around and wished to try again.
I began to see eating as a pleasurable way of nurturing my body so that I could be free to be who I am and to do what I had come here to do, which is to deal with the real starvation that is happening on earth right now.
Mark no longer believes in the fear of hunger. He teaches meditation on inner emptiness as a path of self-discovery. He holds the belief that the experience of inner emptiness is a wonderful and necessary part of human life, leading to greater self-understanding and the connectedness of all things. He has lost fifty pounds. He is working for an organization that fights world hunger.