by Barry Kerr and Kristine Gay

Do you talk to yourself? Who doesn’t, right? The only people who take allot flak about this are the ones who do it out loud. And even some of them are tolerated, if it’s only momentary and doesn’t turn into too much drama. Yes, we all do it, but it’s what we are telling ourselves that makes the difference in how well we feel.

Our egos, to a great extent, are created as a result of all the things we tell ourselves about ourselves and our life. From the beginning of our lives, the experiences we have are recorded in our deep memory cells. Many of them affect us at the time in ways that challenge us to make sense of them. So, naturally, our rational minds interpret the events in some way to help us feel safer, more in control, and protective of ourselves.

The younger we are, the more likely our interpretations are made within a very limited, ego perspective and lack the life experience to give insight into other people’s behavior. Typically, we believe that whatever happens to us, is our fault and however we are treated is because we deserve it. This can create patterns of guilt, shame, and poor self-esteem. The important part to realize about this phenomenon is that most of these interpretations happen tacitly, outside of our conscious awareness and become part of an ongoing story of life that informs our conscious thoughts and feelings.

In effect, we are making these stories up as we go. Yes, there are real and measurable aspects to the events that happen beyond our subjective perspectives, but as we all know, different people can experience the same exact events and have very different interpretations and resulting feelings. And this is the key: the interpretation, the story we tell ourselves, not the event itself, determines the emotional experience. There is never anything inherent in any event that “causes” our emotions. It seems that way to us because how we interpret the event can happen instantly, without our awareness.

After years of similar events with similar interpretations, we create deep-seated habits of reactions to life, never questioning how we are interpreting what we experience. At some point, it can begin to feel as though life just happens and forces us to have bad feelings, over and over again. We can create long life stories of pain and suffering in which we are, of course, the victim, because we have no choice in it, no power. “This is just me”, we might say, “It’s who I am”. Then, we can feel stuck.

The path to spiritual consciousness requires that each of us become aware of this phenomenon of story telling and take responsibility for the stories we tell ourselves. Much of the powerful, transformative healing and growth work that we do with clients in our practice is to help them go to the deep inner awareness of experiences in their past to discover at the conscious level the interpretations of life events they created at various ages.

We do this in a way that is not led by the rational, logical and limited mind. It’s not analytical. Rather, we create with our clients an energy dynamic that enhances their ability to call on their soul, their divine spiritual source connection, to lead the way. This awakens an intuitive pathway toward what needs attention and the information needing to come into consciousness. Just as important, this soul-based approach allows our clients to strengthen their awareness of their own divine being and bring the light of unconditional love and compassion to themselves in whatever life memory they are exploring. It’s a gentle, quiet, and patient process. It doesn’t dismiss the rational mind. There is thinking and communication that happens throughout, but we subject our human minds to the will of spirit, allowing soul to inspire and lead.

In this way, we bypass the hard-wired habits of subliminal thinking and storytelling that has accumulated over many years and we get down to the larger, broader and more complete interpretations of events that seemed unavailable at the original time. This heals. It doesn’t deny the pain that existed at the time, but it empowers clients, from a more complete perspective, a more true perspective, including an evolved awareness of divine existence, to generate positive emotions around events that have plagued them for decades and have fueled negative habits and choices.

When clients choose to do this deep work with us repeatedly, core pieces of their life story begin to evolve, affecting layers and layers of sub-stories until at some point, their entire life story naturally shifts into a higher, more life-fulfilling version. This more complete, more true version results in better feelings, more happiness.

To be clear, we are not talking about simply denying the past pains in our lives by merely asserting some virtuous sounding platitudes or repeating mantras of blissful desires. That is what we call spiritual bypassing and only serves to rebury our emotional patterns into subliminal blindness. No, the affective spiritual work is to be with the difficult emotions as they arise and allow them to connect us to the deeper awareness stored in our body. Doing so is how we heal the past, keep ourselves present to the present, and avoid creating further subliminal patterns of suffering.

Of course, as life continues, more stories get created. But now, the interpretations of new events are created with more conscious awareness of the larger paradigm of spirit, soul, compassion, evolvement, and the challenges of limited ego perspective. Our wounded “inner child” no longer makes our choices. Instead, we invite our soul to lead, bringing intuitive awareness to our human minds and hearts in real time, as events unfold. This absolutely changes the patterns of emotions we create for ourselves to a more positive frequency. This can have profound affects on our body and physical health.

If you are interested in exploring this kind of healing and growth for yourself, please consider contacting us. We’d love to tell you more and help you determine if this work and we are a good match for you. Our one-person personal retreats are most powerful and life-changing. We also offer periodical sessions in our healing center in Madison, Wisconsin or by Skype or phone.

608-345-2470

Barry@ChooseConsciousLiving.com, Kristine@ChooseConsciousLiving.com