In addition to using mindfulness for the purpose of personal mastery— releasing or controlling the impact of your subconscious fear-based beliefs in your life—there are several other strategies you can use to help you understand and deal with your fear-driven emotions.
Every Event Is Neutral
This is one of the first strategies I adopted before I started meditating and understood what mindfulness was. I wanted to find a way of controlling my fear-based thoughts and behaviours to minimize my emotional reactions. To this end, I established the following mantra, which I used whenever I felt the slightest hint of irritation or upset. I began by stating to myself the following:
Every event is neutral. I just gave this situation all the meaning it had for me. Why did I choose to give it this meaning? What is the fear I am holding onto that made me choose this reaction? What need do I have that is not being met.
After a while I began to realize, if instead of using the first person singular, I used the second person singular, I could make this statement sound as if it was coming from my soul, and thereby get into a dialogue with my soul. So I changed the statement in the following way. I would say:
Richard, you know that every event is neutral. Why did you allow your ego to give this specific situation (describe situation) the particular meaning it had for you? What fear is your ego holding on to that made you react in this way? What need do you think your ego has that is not being met.
This phrasing allows me to turn to my soul for guidance, and in so doing separate myself from my ego. This separation, of who you are from your ego, is an essential first step in becoming one with your soul.
The reason why I say every event is neutral is because everybody interprets what is going on in their lives from the perspective of their beliefs. One person may interpret a situation as positive, while another person may interpret the same situation as negative. It all depends on your beliefs.
Notice how you are feeling right now about this suggested approach. You may be asking, “How can having cancer or some other life threatening disease be a neutral event?” The reason why it doesn’t feel like a neutral event is because having cancer brings you face to face with the fears you have about your death (if you have cancer), or brings you face to face with your fears about how you are going to cope (if for example, your spouse has cancer). In both situations, fear washes away any idea of neutrality.
Your soul is in charge of your life, and your spouse’s soul is in charge of his or her life. Your souls live in the four-dimensional energetic world, and for them there is no such thing as death. Your bodies may die, but your souls will live on in another dimension of existence. When your body dies it simply means that the soul is no longer projecting its will to be present in the physical world into your body. You should either respect this desire or consciously make changes to your life which allows you to get into closer alignment with your soul.
It is hard for your ego to face death, because death for the ego means the end of its life. However, the purpose of the ego-mind was to help the body—the soul’s vehicle—to stay alive (be present) in the physical world of three-dimensional reality. If, for whatever reason, the soul no longer wants to be in the physical world, then the ego is relieved of its duties.
If you are suffering from an incurable disease, then help your ego come to see that its job is done, so you can die in peace. Death will not affect you because you will never lose soul consciousness; you always have soul awareness, before, during and after you die. Death is more of a problem for those who love you, because they will no longer have you in their three-dimensional physical lives. In their four-dimensional soul awareness they will never lose contact.
By labeling every situation and event in your life as neutral, I am not in any way suggesting that you should deny your emotions. The idea behind this strategy is to help you understand that you create your emotional reality by giving situations all the meaning they have for you. You may not choose the meaning consciously; it may be an unconscious choice based on a subconscious fear. However, at some level, the emotions you are feeling and the meaning you are giving to a situation are generated by your beliefs.
This strategy of regarding every event as neutral leads quite naturally to the next strategy—everything is always perfect.
Everything Is Always Perfect
This strategy can be even more difficult for your three-dimensional ego-mind to stomach than the last one. What I am saying is the following: whatever you are feeling, and whatever is happening, is always absolutely perfect. It is perfect, because either it feels absolutely right, or it is perfect, because it feels really painful.
Pain is a gift. Pain and emotional discomfort are signals from your energy field about issues you need to address to get your body-mind or ego-mind into alignment with your soul-mind. Pains in your body indicate that your body-mind (etheric field) is out of alignment with your soul-mind (spiritual field), and emotional pains indicate your ego-mind (emotional field) is out of alignment with your soul-mind (spiritual field).
Without physical and emotional pains, you would not know you were out of alignment. They grab your conscious attention and give you an impetus (reduce the pain) to take action. From this perspective, you can say that pain is a mechanism to get you to focus on your soul’s needs. In reality pain is part of the energy dynamic which occurs when your etheric, emotional and spiritual fields are out of alignment.
Most people reading this book would find this explanation reasonably acceptable up to a point. But, how about being raped, sexually molested, or even tortured. How is that absolutely perfect? Of course it is not!
By labeling every situation as perfect, even if it is painful, I am not suggesting you should accept what has happened as being fair or just, or that you are in some way responsible for what happened. What I am suggesting is that you should use painful events to get guidance from your soul by saying the following lines:
Look, I don’t know why this is happening, and it is very painful to me. I trust that from your perspective, dear soul, there is a purpose to this, which at some point I will be able to see. Help me to let go of the pain I am experiencing; to understand why this happened, and make changes in my life that bring me closer to thee.
Pain is feedback. You do not need to judge the feedback. What you need to do is set your mind working on what you need to do to resolve the situation so you do not have to experience the pain again. In other words, see the pain as a gift or guidance from the four-dimensional world of energy (your soul) about things that you need to correct in your three-dimensional life so you get your energy field back into alignment.
Pain is not perfect because it feels perfect; pain is perfect because it provides you the opportunity to correct a misalignment and get closer to your soul.
Sometimes, accidents or situations that stop you in your tracks and cause you to rest or recuperate can turn out to be blessings. They are perfect because they give you the gift of time—time to stop and reflect on what is important in your life. The time you get for reflection may allow you to get back into alignment with your soul.
There are so many situations in my own life and in the stories I have heard from others where what were thought of as “life disasters” turned out to be blessings. By choosing to regard what is happening as perfect, you are opening your mind to the possibilities that what feels like a painful situation right now might bring you immense opportunities in the future for more happiness, and help you to get closer to your soul. Which leads me, rather nicely, into the next strategy—there are no problems in life, only opportunities.
Problems Are Opportunities in Disguise
Problems weigh you down and drain away your energy. The reason why they drain your energy is because they cause you to shift into fear. Viewed from the third dimension of consciousness, a problem is a situation where you either fear you will not be able to cope, or you fear you may not be able to get your needs met. This causes you to worry and often leads to stress.
Alternatively, viewed from the fourth dimension of consciousness a problem is an opportunity for you to accept the challenge of overcoming your fears, and in so doing move closer to your soul.
Your soul wants/needs you to become fear-less, not necessarily fearless and take unnecessary risks, but to have less fears. If you want to get closer to your soul, you have to remove as much fear from your life as possible because fear lowers the frequency of vibration of your energy field and separates you from your soul.
The energetic heaviness you feel when you constantly worry or feel stressed makes you feel tired. You nod off to sleep at the drop of a hat. The reason for this is because your soul finds it difficult to project itself into an energy field that is conditioned by the low frequency vibrations associated with fear. Sleep allows the soul to replenish itself from the universal energy field of love by closing down the conscious mind from thought.
If you frequently feel tired and need lots of sleep, then your ego is probably not in alignment with your soul. At some level your energy field is being drained by fear-based thoughts and beliefs.
Everything Has a Meaning
There is no statement truer than everything has a meaning. The problem is that when we are operating in three-dimensional consciousness, we have no idea of the four-dimensional causes of the things that happen in our three-dimensional world. The only thing we can do is trust our souls—trust that whatever is happening has a meaning or purpose.
When you are prepared to accept that everything has a meaning, but you may not know what that meaning is, you can either make up a meaning or you can learn to live in faith and uncertainty. When you are able to live in uncertainty, and trust in your soul that whatever is happening will lead to a positive outcome, you are making a major commitment to your soul which will not go unrewarded.
If you are unable to accept that everything has a meaning, you may eventually get to the point where you believe your life has no meaning. Once again, at times such as this, it is worth saying the following words to your soul:
My dear soul, I am at a loss to see the meaning in what is happening to me at this moment (describe what you believe is happening). I trust that it is somehow serving your purpose or needs. Help me to uncover the meaning so I can view what is happening in a positive light.
If you want to live the life of your soul, you will have to recognize there may be situations where you are unable to make sense of what is happening. The only way to deal with such situations is to begin trusting your soul. Assume everything is perfect and that some point in the future you will understand why what is happening is an opportunity and not a problem.
©2012 by Richard Barrett. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the author.
Published by Fulfilling Books, Bath, UK
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What My Soul Told Me
by Richard Barrett.
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About the Author
Richard Barrett is an author, speaker and internationally recognised thought leader on the evolution of human values in business and society. He is the founder and chairman of the Barrett Values Centre, a Fellow of the World Business Academy, an Advisory Board Member of the Centre for Integral Wisdom, Honorary Board Member of the Spirit of Humanity Forum, and Former Values Coordinator at the World Bank. He is the creator of the Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT) which have been used to support more than 5,000 organizations in 60 different countries on their transformational journeys. Richard has been a visiting lecturer at the Consulting and Coaching for Change, Leadership Course run by the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and HEC in Paris. He has also been an Adjunct Professor at Royal Roads University, Institute for Values-based Leadership, and a visiting lecturer at the One Planet MBA at Exeter University. Richard Barrett is the author of numerous books. Visit his websites at valuescentre.com and newleadershipparadigm.com.
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