How do you know if your assumptions are right?

When it comes to relationships, we make all our choices for conscious and unconscious reasons.  How would your life be different if you began to consciously recognize unhealthy behaviour patterns and change? Modifying your behaviour doesn't necessarily mean you get to the root of your conditioning.  How do you know if your assumptions uncover what you see or, only what you would like to see?  Do you really know yourself?

Take your current partner.  To acknowledge the truth of what is happening in your life within your relationships, you need to be willing to take responsibility for your half of making or watching it happen.  As you reflect on your conditions, you can, when ready, gradually grow to see where your beliefs and agreements create where you are. 

One man shared a story.  He felt that as his personal life took off in a good way, unforeseen obstacles appeared to repeatedly annoy him or push his goals out of reach.  For example, his business partner cheated him and their business folded.  Then, stress and financial strain mounted.  As finances grew healthier, he was wrongfully accused of an unrelated crime he didn't commit that complicated smoother sailing.  Then, even wedding plans seemed to him problematic as mysterious glitches appeared.

Always remind yourself apparent challenges are blessings.  They help us deal  with self-centeredness, self-importance and self-esteem issues. In order to benefit, a person has to be willing to address the underlying reasons for self-sabotage.  Your choice of how to react to other people determines whether you take their behavior personally.  As you come to realize you don't always have to prove you're right, your perspective changes. You take responsibility for yourself and certain things no longer matter.  You can grow.

What if you decided to release all your expectations about everything and everyone? This would require detaching from rigid points of view about why you think things should work in a certain way.   This process takes courage, discipline, self-control.  Are you ready?

What's the common thread?

What's the common thread in your most life-changing experiences? They are not about you.  They are not personal.  That may surprise you.  In fact, they could involve someone else and you could be just standing in.  You could even step back and live vicariously through someone else and get the message.  Do you begin to sense underlying vibrations?

Many people share stories, and stories have intrinsic meaning.  Stories may also inspire , motivate or discourage others.  Yet, stories mean the most to those who experience them.  They're the only ones who truly understand.  Their truth must be felt by them. 

The common thread isn't linked to fears evoked by stories, like shaky self-worth, esteem or whether others judge.  Emotions simply distract you. They want you to stay as you are, drain personal power and get wrapped up in fear-based beliefs. What prevents you from facing every challenge as it comes, with an open heart? The absence of love.

Let's say the common thread is human beings choose to experience and learn the meaning of love.  Each individual can evolve to sense there are no such thing as guarantees.  Thoughts and feelings enhance our process of personal growth or further blind us from what we deny or do not choose to experience.  You manipulate your own awareness. 

So, what about the common thread? Each moment you decide to gain new wisdom, build on what you think you know.  This will lead you to the next plateau.  Its self-perpetuating.

Why is control an illusion?

Whether or not you realize or accept it, you exert no control over what is happening outside yourself.  You have free will and exert control when it comes to your thoughts and feelings, but you don't control anything else.  You are only responsible for you.

Now, if you gaze into a kaleidoscope, you glimpse interacting shapes and colors.  This serves as a fabulous analogy.  Every moment, every human being is contributing to changing shapes and slants inside this kaleidoscope.  Life moves through us and with us. 

Imagine your life as a series of experiences.  You add pieces to your own section of the huge kaleidoscope.  It includes sections contributed by every other creature and living thing.  How could you control all those colors, feelings and experiences?  You don't. The assumption you can is the illusion you create out of a desire to control what you can't.

You are the only person who can discern and change your behaviour.  Do you ever sense your choices are selfish or self-centred?  Do you ever take steps to fight your own resistence?  Pay attention to your vibes.  Listen to your mind.  Choose to avoid conflict, arguments and negative energy.  They are unnecesary illusions.  Why not let them go?

What will you believe?

What causes you to believe something? Is it your senses? Must someone tell you? Is it a vibe you feel? Will you get information from a certain source and automatically believe it to be true? Does it have to be the latest trend? Must other people share your view?

Maybe you tend to be more sceptical. Maybe your reflex is to doubt or question everything you see, hear and feel. Maybe you even seem to naturally doubt other people. Where does this leave you?

When it comes to dreams, in order to realize what you set out to do, it’s necessary to believe in yourself and your potential. It’s also helpful to be discerning, to sense the role of logic, as well as when logic has no place other than to disorient you from the truth.

Now, if you don’t know what to believe, you may have a hard time nurturing faith in yourself.  Attitude always affects your dreams, the kind of experiences you will have, and also when. No matter who you are, you can always build more confidence.

This said, the key to figuring out how you respond is to determine your sense of self- awareness. You might wonder how this is done. After all, how does one become more attuned to feelings and how they influence beliefs? It’s actually quite straightforward.

How about, one step at a time? You know more than you think you do, and may simply underestimate your abilities. Those things that influence whether you believe your senses and people in the world around you also influence the nature of your belief in yourself.

As you begin to realize everything is connected, you also begin to discern that scepticism or widespread in one area of your life actually carries over to affect your efforts in various endeavours. At the same time, if you readily believe everything everywhere, you are not going to be as discerning about what is good for you by way of the signs your body tells you. So, is there a middle road?

Life is a learning process. Each human being collects experience and takes on board whatever he or she is ready to learn at a given time. What you believe in can change or not. It’s completely up to you.  Your dreams are intrinsically related to your beliefs.

Fly like an elephant & rediscover your best friend

Analysis of the week on dream submitted by A.F. in the Midwestern USA.

Dream- Our "pet" elephant, wrapped in a stretchy, dark-red blanket, was being lowered gently out the upper story window of our house. As the blanket stretched, he did a "fall" to the ground below. After he landed, the blanket fell away. He sat, uninjured, but disoriented, and looked around. Then, a female was throwing my sweet Posie(female dog) at her best friend Sammie (my male dog). I'm very protective of them, and I was chasing her away and yelling at her to NEVER come near my dogs or my home again!

Predomiant Emotions- cautious, surprise, confused, imabalance, and expectations.

Interpretation- People create an image of what you are. You sense this has nothing to do with your inner reality and hope to protect your true self. Yet, if you agree with people, then their views stretch or warp your self-view, and jostle your groundedness. To feel precarious prompts you to shelter yourself from the unknown. You have nothing to fear.  Believing in your own truth will result in a soft landing.  You feel at ease when authentic.

If you desire to move beyond your impulsive reactions, don't believe other people and think twice before you believe yourself. As it happens, the truth survives sceptism and helps break your fall from whatever vantage point you start. The truth about your core passion doesn't change regardless whether you're ready and willing to believe it (or not).

What you believe about yourself, combined with treatment you accept from others, may suggest you aren't worth unlimited love and attention that are always available to you.  Whatever you believe will become your reality.  If you express anger and negativity to chase people out of your life, then similar vibrations will reverberrate back more loudly. 

To prove you rise above misconceptions about yourself, you must accept everyhing about you with faith and trust.  Voices echo in your head like animal cries that tell you where they want you to go.  Tame the wild inside your head.  Stop believing what you don't want.  You are after all, your own best friend.  Balance your male and female instincts.