Tag self exploration

24 February, 2015 by Choki team

3 Steps to Healing Any Relationship

Do you have a relationship that you would like to heal?

In order to heal any relationship it is first important to understand the dynamics behind relationship issues. Relationship issues don’t occur because two people are different or they do not agree. People do not need to agree, or be similar, in order to get along great. Issues occur because one or both people are practicing judgment. It is judgment that causes all the issues in relationships. Without judgment, relationships thrive and when you release judgment, relationships heal.

Why is judgment so detrimental to relationships? When we feel judged, it invokes a feeling of rejection, so we either close down or we judge in return, in order to protect ourselves. Either reaction causes distance and discord.

When we are the ones who judge, we push the other person away, regardless of our justification for judgment. It does not matter if you feel you have a right to judge or that you really do know better, judgment is the best way to alienate a friend, lover, partner, parent, co-worker or child.

Even if we call our judgment by the name of love and caring, it is still judgment and it will always do the opposite of what we intended. If you want to lose someone, judge them.

You cannot love someone and judge them at the same time.

Releasing your judgment for another will help to heal the relationship, but it is not the whole story. There is a little trick to this healing process. If you follow this 3 step process below, you have the power to heal any relationship.

Step 1. Heal Self-Judgment

The entire world is a reflection of your conscious and subconscious beliefs. Therefore, if someone is judging you, his or her judgment must be a reflection of your own self-judgment. You cannot expect another to stop judging you, when you are judging yourself. The key is to identify how the other is judging you and then look inside yourself to see how you are judging yourself in a similar way. It might not be the exact same judgment but try to focus-in on the connection. Once you clearly make this identification, it is time to consciously release your self-judgment.

You do not need to share this with anyone. This process is something that you do privately. You will know when you are successful in releasing self-judgment because the other person will also reflect this by being more accepting of you. If he or she continues to judge you, go back inside and clear out any remains of self-judgment.

Step 2. Heal Your Judgment About the Other Person

How are you judging your friend, spouse, parent or child? Remember, do not confuse caring with judgment. Caring is not judgment. No matter what is going on in his or her life, you have no right to judge. You might want to make a list of all the ways in which you are judging this person and one by one, give up your judgments. Maybe even look to see how you are judging yourself in the same way and release those judgments, as well.

The fact is, no matter how wise you might be or how well you know this person, you do not know what is best for him or her.

If you care about someone and you want to help, the best you can do is to support her, in listening to her own heart, and by encouraging her to ask herself the right questions, so that she can make empowered choices. If you are insightful, you might even offer a question that will allow her to find her own clarity.

Don’t give advice unless asked and even then be careful that it does not contain any elements of judgment. If you judge, you alienate and if you alienate, you blow your chance for making a difference.

If you really want to be a positive influence, be a great example. Stay in integrity with your own beliefs and model this behavior but do not try to preach or meddle – because another will experience this as judgment and your message will fail to have the impact that you desire.

This article is about healing adult relationships, but even small children react negatively to judgment and positively to encouragement. You can be a more empowered parent without judgment, and you can effectively guide a child of any age without the punitive force of judgment.

Step 3. See the Other Person as Perfect and Whole

Make a list of all the things that you love about him or her. Focus only on these things every day. Do not give your attention to the things that you do not like or the problems at hand. Only focus on what you love about this person – without the issues. I knew that this can be challenging, especially when there are problems between the two of you, but if you can consistently focus on the positive and ignore the negative, before long things will begin to change – it is all up to you.

The other person will change because how you see this person changes. The amazing part is that you never have to say a thing to him or her. You only have to silently focus on the positive. You will be very aware of the changes in this person and in the relationship but he or she may be oblivious to any difference. By mentally and emotionally aligning with the positive aspects of your friend, partner, parent or child, you literally invoke a higher version of the person and a higher version of the relationship.

If you can drop your judgments, rationalizations and justifications, and you can take complete responsibility for the relationship and your experience of the other person, you have the power to not only heal the relationship but to create the best possible relationship that you can imagine.

There was once a woman in a class that I taught – she asked what she should do about her daughter who was so judgmental. My answer was, “Stop judging your daughter.” She said, “No, you don’t understand. It is my daughter who is judgmental – what should I do?” Again, I said, “Stop judging your daughter.” At this point the whole class got it – everyone except this woman. Finally, on the third round, her face went blank and she got it. If you want to change someone, you must be the change you want to see in them.

Judgment can be tricky because often we don’t even know when we are doing it, but we always feel when someone is doing it to us. If someone is reacting negatively to you, stop and look at yourself; where might you be in judgment? Even if you are not verbalizing it, your energy always projects your thoughts and feelings.

Healing Requires Time and Patience

Keep in mind that there is often a time gap between your inner release of judgment (and your mental shift) and the outside world catching up as an accurate reflection. So patience in the process is a good idea.

This means that the other may still be critical of you and show discord – allow him or her their experience and maintain your course. How long you ask? For as long as it takes. Giving it a deadline only makes it take longer and you may not reach your goal. But, if you can stay true to course in both loving yourself and the other, sooner or later a huge transformation will unfold.

At first you may notice less tension between the two of you or an openness that was not there before. Do not jump at the first signs of success. Just keep loving and be appropriately responsive in a positive and encouraging way. Sometimes there are bumps in the road, so don’t react if things are improving and then an issue arises – just stay aligned with this three step process and any issues will begin to smooth out again.

If you stay the course, success is imminent. However, if you go back to your old ways of judging, the relationship will digress as well, and you will be back to where you started. If this should occur, begin again.

This 3 step healing process does not exclude setting boundaries. If someone is judging you, you can say, in a kind and respectful manner, “I’m sorry, you probably did not know this, but no one is allowed to judge me.” When he does judge, you can say, “I’m sorry, I cannot hear you when you are judging me.” This sets a boundary for you and gives the other person important feedback on how to treat you. Make sure that your actions are in integrity with your requests.

This relationship healing process requires great spiritual maturity. In order for it to work you must rid yourself of pride, arrogance and self-righteousness. You must cast blame to the wind and you must take complete responsibility for every relationship. Others do not need to wake up, be responsible, apologize or do anything different. Only you need to shift. You must be the change you want to see in the ones you love.

Any two people in the world can have a great relationship if they surrender judgment and they embrace each other from a space of pure appreciation.

Relationship Affirmation: I love you more than “who I think you should be,” so I am just going to let you be you, and I am going to love you without needing or wanting you to change in anyway.

www.choki.org

Author: Nanice Ellis / Wake Up World

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7 January, 2015 by Choki team

Who Am I?

The question is an eternal one. If you don’t answer it, you may never be able to distinguish between what your essential self wants and what other people manipulate you to want. Each of us may do best to answer it for himself or herself. Yet the answers given by others do affect the way we approach (or avoid) this question. Several general types of answers have been offered.

The most traditional answer in Western culture is that you are a creature, a creation of God, a creation that is flawed in vital ways. Conceived and born in original sin, you are someone who must continually struggle to obey the rules laid down by that God, lest you be damned. It is an answer that appears depressing in some ways. One the one hand, it can lead to low self-worth and the expectation of failure. On the other, it can lead to the rigid arrogance of being one of the “elect.” Further, this view doesn’t much encourage you to think about who you really are, as the answer has already been given from a “higher” source.

The more modern answer to “Who am I?” is that you are a meaningless accident. Contemporary science is largely associated with a view of reality that sees the entire universe as totally material, governed only by fixed physical laws and blind chance. It just happened that, in a huge universe, the right chemicals came together under the right conditions so that the chemical reaction we call life formed and eventually evolved into you. But there’s no inherent meaning in that accident, no spiritual side to existence.

I believe that this view is not really good science, but rather what we believe to be scientific and factual. More important, it’s a view that has strong psychological consequences. After all, if you’re just a mixture of meaningless chemicals, your ultimate fate – death and nonexistence – is clear. Don’t worry too much about other people, as they are just meaningless mixtures of chemicals, too. In this view, it doesn’t really matter if you think about who you really are – whatever conclusions you arrive at are just subjective fantasies, of no particular relevance in the real physical world.

Psychologically speaking, this materialist view of our ultimate nature leaves as much to be desired as does the born-into-original-sin view. As a psychologist, I stress the psychological consequences of these two views of your ultimate identity, because your beliefs play an important role in shaping your reality. Modern research has shown that, in many ways, what we believe affects the way our brain constructs the world we experience. Some of these beliefs are conscious. You know you have them. Yet many are implicit – you act on them, but don’t even know you have them.

If you think life in general is a meaningless accident, your perceptions of the complex world around you will likely be biased toward seeing the meaningless and absurd. Seeing this will in turn reinforce your belief in the meaninglessness of things. If you believe in original sin and the great difficulties of finding salvation, your perceptions will likely be biased toward seeing your own and others’ failures, again reinforcing your belief in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our beliefs about who we are and what our world is like are not mere beliefs – they strongly control our perceptions. So we can gain more control by finding out what we believe and how those beliefs affect us.

Between the traditional religious and materialistic views of who you are, there are a variety of ideas that embrace elements of each which include rich possibilities for personal and social growth. The common element in these other views is that life and the universe do have some meaning and that each of us shares in some form of spiritual nature. Yet they also recognize that something has gone wrong somewhere. We have “temporarily” lost our way. We have forgotten the essential divine element within us and have become psychologically locked into a narrow, traditional, religious or materialist views.

There is an old Eastern teaching story that illustrates this – the story of the Mad King. Although he is actually the ruler of vast dominions, the Mad King has forgotten this. Years ago he descended into the pits of the dankest cellar of his great palace, where he lives in the dark amongst rags and rats, continually brooding on his many misfortunes. The king’s ministers try valiantly to persuade him to come upstairs into the light, where life is beautiful. But the Mad King is convinced these are madmen and will not listen. He will not be taken in by fairy tales of noble kings and beautiful palaces!

We have a lot of evidence in modern psychology to show how little of our natural potential we use and how much of our suffering is self-created, clasped tightly to our bosoms in crazed fear and ignorance. Yet the ministers do carry a light with them when they come down into the cellar, and they do bring the food which keeps the king alive. Even in his madness, he must sometimes notice this. In the real world, events keep occurring that don’t fit into our narrow views, no matter how tightly we may hold them, and sometimes these events catch our attention.

So-called psychic phenomena are like that. They certainly don’t fit a materialistic view, just as they challenge the traditional religious view held by many that this kind of phenomena only happened thousands of years ago, and are thus to be believed, but not pondered.

Psychic phenomena are disturbing to both the traditional religious and materialistic views of who we are. It is one thing to consider abstractly that our true identity may be more than we conceive, or that our universe may be populated with other non-material intelligences. It is quite another thing, with channeling for instance, when the ordinary looking person sitting across from you seems to go to sleep, but suddenly begins speaking to you in a different voice, announcing that he is a spiritual entity who has temporarily taken over the channel’s body to teach you something!

Now you have to really look at what’s going on. Who is that so-called “entity?” Who is that person who channels? If someone else can have his or her apparent identity change so drastically, do we really know who they are? Can I even be sure about who I am? If you have been conditioned to believe that who you are is meaningless or inherently bad or sinful, you might not welcome this stimulation that the phenomena of channeling gives to the question “Who am I?”

We have many ways of psychologically defending ourselves against dealing with things that don’t fit into our organized and defended world. You could just say, “This person is crazy, or maybe even deliberately faking this stuff.” It’s a good defense, for of course there are some people known as channels who are probably just crazy or deliberately faking it. The best lies usually contain a very high proportion of truth.

You could also just naively accept whatever the ostensible channeled entity says. “Yes, you are Master Shananangans from the 17th planet of the central divine galaxy Ottenwelt. Teach me Master, I hear and obey.” This overenthusiastic acceptance can be just as much of a defense against deeper thinking and questioning as overenthusiastic rejection.

Channeling and other psychic phenomena are having a great impact on our culture today. We can use this impact for personal and social growth if we are willing to think about the deeper implications, and examine the things we take for granted about our inherent nature.

If we just believe or disbelieve without really looking, this opportunity will be lost. Read, reflect, examine your own beliefs, argue, go meet some psychics or channels. Perhaps you will decide that they are “real.” Perhaps you will decide they are not “real” in the ordinary sense of the word, but are somehow psychologically or spiritually real or important. Perhaps you will decide that some (or most or all) of this stuff is really crazy. But in the process, you will learn a lot about who you are, and who we are.

www.choki.org

Author: Prof. Charles Tart

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