This
past winter I had lunch with my dear friend and counselor Marcia Williams, Prevost, Ernest Holmes Institute and an ordained
Science of Mind Minister. She told me about this wonderful book, Calling In The One by Katherine Woodward Thomas. The book is about a seven week process to attract into your life “the love you have been waiting
for.”
Well
I bought the book and with a few other people, completed the process. What I found was that I called in “ many wonderful
opportunities to share my spiritual gifts, opportunities to travel abroad, and opportunities to give and share love in a more
profound way.” I have accessed greater clarity about myself and what I
deserve and desire in all of my relationships.
Another
participant said she found that the process assisted her in the unfoldment of her authentic self. I loved the process and I think it’s a powerful transformative process that would benefit most people. I want to share a few things with you so that you too can begin calling in your authentic
life.
Our
early childhood programming determines how we relate to ourselves and to others. I
believe that in order to open up a space for our “authentic lives”, we at some point must resolve our childhood
woundings. Katherine says, “Our woundedness is actually an opportunity
for enlightenment—for truthfully, apart from a lifetime of victimization, there really is no other option.”
In
the book The Power of Now, by Eckhart
Tolle he writes, “If you are trapped in a nightmare you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone
who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream.” If you have endured incredible losses and sorrows,
life is demanding that you awaken in a more profound way than most. Find your
lesson and weave meaning out of your sorrows. As the Zen saying goes, “allow
your hearts to break open.” It is here that we learn to love again and
in such a way that helps to heal the world.
Jean
Houston in The Search for the Beloved
says, “How do you take your woundings, your betrayals, and your ‘holes’ and make yourself holy instead of
battered? The process involves the dramatic remythologizing of yourself and your
life, gaining a very different perspective.”
Your
parents, siblings, teachers, family, neighbors and peers were often off the mark in their assessment of you. They may have undervalued you, over-pressured you, neglected to notice your strengths and criticized you
mercilessly for what they secretly feared as unacceptable about themselves. Often
we perpetuate abuse against ourselves because we have not stopped to realize that what they said to us wasn’t so much
about us as it was about them. When Zusya, a Hasidic rabbi was criticized for
unorthodox behavior, he replied, “In the next world I will not be asked why in this life I was not Moses but rather
why I was not Zusya.”
Katherine
says in Calling In the One, “Our
goal is not so much to get rid of the false beliefs we have about ourselves as it is to transform the relationships we have
with them. They may never go away entirely.
Yet we must learn to give up relating to them as though they were the dreaded truth about who and what we are.” So decide now to stop allowing other people’s opinions of us to bully us around
with their litany of what isn’t right about us. We have to stay mindful
of these “inner” conversations and tell ourselves a new, more empowering story about ourselves. Be also mindful that you don’t treat yourself the same way you complain your caregivers treated you. We can lament for years about our mother or father’s neglect of us but until
we stop neglecting ourselves, it won’t make one bit of difference.
Many
of us just don’t allow love into our lives because it is outside of who we believe ourselves to be. Our whole sense of ourselves may be tied to a disappointment…some event that suggested that we were
unlovable, unworthy of love or simply alone in life.
In
order to allow love into our lives, these constructs of self must be revealed for being just that…constructs…and
not the truth of who we are. Are you willing to do some work on you?
A
good question can take you to the core of your beliefs. If you are ready to rethink
and resolve your childhood woundedness here are some good questions to get you started:
What
was a significant disappointment that you endured in childhood?
What
did you tell yourself about yourself when this disappointment happened?
What
did you tell yourself about the world and other people when this disappointment happened?
What
is an alternative interpretation of this experience?
Are
you willing to forgive yourself and everyone involved in the disappointment?
