What is it that you are seeking? If you are like most people, then you seek freedom...
Many people believe that the freedom they seek is financial freedom or even freedom from some kind of addiction, but on closer examination, isn’t it actually emotional freedom that you crave?
Realizing that the core of what we are seeking is freedom from emotional bondage, wouldn’t it make sense to shift our focus from the outer world and how we think things need to be in order for us to be happy, to our inner reality where our true power really lies?
the only way to achieve emotional freedom.
Ultimately the only way to achieve emotional freedom is to shift our inner perspective...
At first it may seem as though the obvious course of action is to simply change your thoughts. This is what has to happen since...
Our thoughts create our emotions, which then activate our behaviors, which reinforce our emotions.
Beyond just “trying” to change our thoughts, our whole paradigm has to be transformed in order to achieve emotional freedom.
Rather than just try to stop thinking negatively, we have to become aware of and shift the underlying belief systems that perpetuate difficult thoughts and feelings.
So how do you change a belief?
I like to think of our personal growth development as occurring in levels. All of our lives, I believe, we are cycling through these levels. Each level has its own set of beliefs or core statements.
Level One: I Need You to Fill My Needs
We start off in the world completely helpless. We wouldn’t survive if other people didn’t take care of us.
So it’s easy to see how we came to the conclusion that we need to figure out how to get our needs met by others.
The problem is, that beyond our physical need for food and shelter being met, each of us soon discovers that our need for consistent emotional Freedom and care is left wanting, at one point or another.
The statement at the first, outer level is, “I need you to fill my needs.” When we experience the sting of pain that naturally occurs when we discover that we can’t consistently get our emotional freedom and needs met by others, often our instinct is to want to shut down.
To one degree or another, we may pull away from others because we feel hurt and unsafe. Our belief at that point may be, “I can’t trust you,” or “I’m not good enough,” or “I have to earn your love.”
Level Two: I’ll do it myself
When we feel let down by others, we instinctively move to the second level of belief...
The statement at the second level is, “Since I can’t trust you to fill my needs. I will fill my own needs.”
We seek to meet our own needs, though often we don’t know how to do that effectively, because what we are truly craving is love, and how can we give that to ourselves?
Reacting to the discovery that others can’t truly fulfill us, we move to a place of separation or feeling disconnected.
We may feel as if we have no use for that person (or anyone) anymore and experience feelings of anger, disappointment, frustration and loneliness.
When we are living at the second level we go forward in life with the intention of making sure that our own needs are met, despite other people.
Since love is what we seek and we don’t know how to give ourselves the love we long for, we subconsciously look for substitutions and that is how our quest for pleasure begins.
The Futility of Pleasure-Seeking
However, ultimately, we experience the pain that inevitably follows too much pleasure seeking, because attempting to meet our own needs by basking in the pleasure we associate with any escape, whether that be food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, sex, work or socializing, can’t be sustained.
Ultimately,
Too much pleasure seeking leads to an increase in negative feelings such as depression, emptiness, loneliness, boredom or frustration.
This is because what comes up must come down—we can’t avoid the opposites of life.
Also, since we never resolved the feelings we experienced at the first level (when our needs were legitimately not met by others), the pain we experience from the disappointment of pleasure seeking is even stronger.
Unfortunately, we can stay at the second level—trying in vain to fill our own needs—by switching from one addiction to another for a very long time.
But, the pain becomes too great and we experience an undesired consequence, in our lives.
Perhaps our health gives out, or we experience the betrayal of a loved one, or we experience a disappointment that feels too great to bear.
After living at this second level where the beliefs that drive you are, “I can do it myself. I don’t need you. I’ll take care of myself,”
we come to see that this way of thinking and operating does not work. It is this epiphany and understanding that allows the surrender to happen and true healing to begin.
Level Three: The Universe is a Friendly, Supportive Place for Me
Now you are able to move to a deeper level in your development, and awaken the fulfilled, happy and useful human being you were created to be.
In the third phase, the statement is, “All my needs are already met.”
In this phase you let go of needing your needs to be met by a specific person of your choosing or the notion that we can somehow take care of ourselves completely, as if we were an island.
Instead, we seek to feel the Union we have with all of life...
We trust that the Universe is a friendly place and that it is here to provide for us. We intuitively know, at our core, that in order to be happy we need to follow five basic rules:
1. Living with integrity.
2. Behaving with dignity.
3. Respecting ourselves and others.
4. Cleaning up our mistakes promptly (as soon as we become aware of them).
5. Taking note of our feelings of constriction and focusing on and embracing our potential for expansion.
When we do live by these guidelines, we are guided to the people, places and things that meet all our needs and beyond.
At the first two levels of awareness, when we experience a negative emotion, we try to fix it by manipulating another person to care for us, or by pulling away and trying to change our internal state with the use of some kind of substance or engaging in a random activity, holding onto the concept that we are alone and have to do everything ourselves.
A Shift in Perspective
However, when we allow ourselves to taste the stage of 'unity with life,' as soon as we notice that we are upset, we realize that we have a choice.
We can go into our head and be absorbed in the “drama” that is unfolding. We can replay it and find blame in ourselves or another, or we can come down into our feeling awareness (out of our heads and beyond the feeling of constriction in the body caused by our emotion), and witness the story from a wider view point.
Understanding that a shift in perspective may take time and is available through grace (beyond our conscious control) we can continue to hold the intention to open our awareness without trying (in vain) to force ourselves to change the thoughts.
By practicing self-hypnosis and continuing to connect with a greater part of yourself, the old, negative mental patterns begin to melt away and you can step into a greater potential for your life!
