What You Believe is What You See
We are way more powerful than we think. We have so much control over how we experience life and we don't even realize it. That's because we are under a mass delusion (most of us, anyway). We tend to believe that experiences happen to us; that things that occur in the outside world cause us to feel a certain way. Within this belief system we are victims of circumstance. We have no control. People, places, and things just do their thing, and we have to live with the result. Luckily for all of us, this belief system is completely false.
The truth is that everything that occurs outside of you is a reflection of your internal world.
Everything that you see is, in fact, a mirror of what is going on inside of you.
Think about it. We can't experience something without it passing through our already established internal world. And because of this, our internal world plays a major role in how we interpret the external world. Everything is subjective! This, my friend, makes you powerful. Clean up your internal world, and your outside world starts to look pretty nice. I'll explain more...
The unconscious is a little thing that holds our internal beliefs and feelings that we aren't aware of. But it's easy to figure out what's going on in your unconscious because it starts to show up in front of you all over the place (remember, outside is a reflection of the inside). This means that any patterns you cycle through, or any feelings that you continue to come-up against in other people, are actually happening within YOU! We experience what is happening WITHIN US through other people (in psychobabble, this is called projection--thanks Freud).
When things aren't going well in a relationship, we often blame the other person for our experience. We believe that we "choose" the wrong people to hang-out with or date. But guess what? If an experience shows-up time and time again, that means you are carrying it with you! And this is where the power is, because you have control over you.
Let me give an example. I've recently been talking to women who perpetually experience men as unavailable. We (I'm included in this one) get stuck in this cycle and can't understand why it keeps happening. We think it's their fault. We think something is seriously wrong with the Y chromosome. Many of us blame this cycle on the first unavailable man in our lives (hello dad), but he's not actually at fault either. What is really going on here is that we are being unavailable in relationships, and then experiencing unavailability in our partners. We aren't showing up fully or authentically, and then we blame them for feeling unavailable! See what I mean? Outside reflects inside. (See my blog post Your Man is Your Mirror for more on this specific pattern)
We're all doing this in our relationships! Blaming our partners for "making us feel" trapped, unwanted, unloved, unfaithful, un-whatever! And the truth is, if we feel those things in the first place (consciously or unconsciously), then we are automatically going to feel them in our relationships. Whatever we want to change in another person we HAVE TO CHANGE IN US FIRST!
Now, this is really good news. Because we actually can't change other people (although we continue to try) and we can change ourselves. I'm going to tell you how in the next few blog posts, but for starters, here's what you need to do:
1) Start to become aware that the pattern you experience in other people is occurring within you (what are blaming someone else for? How are you doing a similar thing?).
2) Begin to understand your old, false-beliefs and take steps to change them (beliefs such as: I'm not good enough--which ain't true!).
3) Start forgiving others to release old resentments. A resentment will keep you stuck in the past, creating a pattern in the present.
You do these things and your life is going to change for the better, BIG TIME! Clean up your internal world, and the external world gets much, much brighter.