The Goal is Not to Change Emotional Experience, Just Remember the Source that Creates It
I have noticed how I can be critical. I can be sharp. I don’t mean to be, but I can have an edge. This occurs when my personal thinking is stirred up. I am feeling separate. My “I” is strong. Then other times when my thinking is more settled my “I” softens and my heart opens. I feel connected and more peaceful.
I am struck by the benefit of the understanding of the principles for pointing out how I can be more neutral about not just being the soft “I” with the expanded heart. I put less pressure on myself and don’t make one stance right and the other stance wrong. There is simply the opportunity to know where I am on my psychological map as Linda Pransky recently shared in the webinar she did for the Soul-Centered Series. This knowing is all that is needed. I naturally course-correct from there.
When I know I am taking things personally, being critical, or reactive, I automatically have more distance from my thinking. I am better able to navigate my humanness. There is something so refreshing about not needing to change my psychological map or having to block off territories and label them as scary no-go zones. Understanding there is no place on the map that is not me living in my thinking makes the whole map feel safe.
The content of my thinking might be different, but it is all coming from the same place. I might enjoy the waterfalls of happiness more than the watering holes of despair, but the territory is all created the same way. I am always experiencing thought in the moment, and the principle of thought is pure potential. Even if I don’t like the content of what I am experiencing, it is coming from the same formless energy that my best experiences come from. Seeing this helps me to be less reactive to my difficult feelings and less judgmental of myself when I am not my best.
I noticed that I have been irritable with my husband Angus lately. One of the difficulties we run into is that we can have different understandings of agreements we make with each other. I thought he agreed to do something by a certain time. He knew he agreed to it, but didn’t really think about the timeline. I felt let down and disappointed, and I criticized him. I blamed him for things not getting done. He felt hurt and didn’t think I was being fair. In the past, this would have led to the dance of death.
We used to do this dance often. I would feel constantly disappointed with Angus. It never occurred to me that my disappointment was not a result of him not keeping an agreement. I didn’t see disappointment as thought — my perspective. I saw it as fact and his fault. I didn’t recognize that he and I view agreements differently. I see them as written in stone and having to be kept no matter what. He sees them more as a vague yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’ll get to it when I can. He also has a tendency to say yes before thinking things through. When this happened and things wouldn’t pan out, I would feel devastated. I took it personally. I believed it meant I couldn’t trust him. This was ridiculous because Angus is one of the most trustworthy people I know when it comes to what is important.
In my arrogance, I thought my way was the right way and focused on trying to change Angus to be more like me. But when I did this, Angus would just not make any agreements. He didn’t want to disappoint me so the best way forward was to not agree to anything. This didn’t feel good either.
Where I found my peace was in accepting how Angus sees the world and how he navigates it is not wrong or bad. It works for him. Since I love him and want to be with him, I had to find a way to accept his reality as valid and a way to work with him within our separate realities. When I stopped judging his way as wrong, it opened me up to ways of being with him that didn’t include me controlling him or changing him. I found that we were more often than I realized completely on the same page, but just had different ways of getting there.
I do still get caught up in my feelings of dismay at times when things don’t turn out as I think they should, like this recent time, but I am also grateful to be reminded by Angus that the world does not actually end when this happens. I am better able to see that my rigidity is not a strength. It actually makes me more vulnerable to mental and emotional destabilization. It may look like it helps me to get sh*t done, but who I am while I’m getting it done is not who I want to be. A more laid back and flexible approach to life is something that I now respect a great deal more than I used to, and I can thank Angus for modeling this to me.
Knowing where I am on my psychological map does help me to spend less time in crazy town and more time enjoying the island of love. And all of the map is fueled by the same source so I can’t really go wrong. When I find myself feeling trapped in my psychological geography, I can remember to look in the direction of where my experience is coming from. This reminds me of the infinite possibility behind my experience and how quickly my thinking changes to create a new experience. Understanding this allows me to be more comfortable hanging out in my difficult feelings and to take my experience less seriously. It also has me feel more compassion for myself when I am in the dark parts of my map.
Rohini Ross is excited to present The Soul-Centered Series in Santa Monica starting October 2018. She is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a transformative coach and trainer, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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