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Unmet Expectations

Relationships: As We Evolve Our Relationships Improve – Part 1/3

2022-07-30T03:34:06+00:00

Relationships are the vehicle that best allows us to work out our issues. Our pains and fears. Our neediness. Our aggression. Our protective devices. It is where we most play out our reactionary or passive styles. This is especially true in our familial and couple relationships This article is based on ch. 5 "Relationships" in Your Journey to Peace ... Our Couple Relationships What most of us look for in our intimate relationships is companionship, and for the other to love, help, and support us in life.  In our younger days, we may look for the right person to build a family with.  We may also look for a partner to offer us security. And from a human perspective, this is all fine. However, from a higher, spiritual perspective, the purpose of all our relationships is for soul growth: to connect more fully to our True Self - so that we can live life coming from a place of LOVE. In fact, all our interactions with others offer us opportunities to come from that place of love: to offer the qualities of love to others.  (See my post The Qualities of Love / the Qualities of Fear. The link is also at the end. Because of the intimacy required, our relationships are the best vehicle to work through our unprocessed hurts and pains from our past. In our day-to-day life, any  Unconscious Influences we may hold, like neediness, defensiveness, or aggressive, controlling, or passive tendencies. naturally arise. It is unprocessed hurts and pains from our past that caused us to create these Unconscious Influences to protect our hearts and psyches. These, along with our individual personalities, differing ways of approaching life, and the various defensive and protective mechanisms we created to protect our hearts and psyches are what creates hurt feelings in us and conflicts with others. Our couple relationships also often hold expectations that cannot be met. And our communication skills are often weak. With presumed, unvoiced, or misunderstood expectations and poor communication we may get hurt feelings or react badly in frustration, and our unconscious, habitual responses rear their ugly head, and instead of coming from a place of love and understanding, we unknowingly invite conflict into our relationships. Our relationships are actually set up to trigger our Unconscious Influences - by others pushing our buttons. This is why our relationships are often so difficult! Unconscious Influence create havoc in our relationships. They cause us to navigate life from a place of fear, protectionism, defensiveness, and suspiciousness. We are overly sensitive and prone to blame to other for how we feel and for not understanding us. The emotional instability and feelings of disempowerment created from past unhealed wounds or conflicting messages we received about love, create ineffective, habitual patterns of negative reactions and behaviors that cause hurt feelings for us and conflicts with others. Our unaddressed wounds get triggered in our communications with others as we erroneously bring echoes of past hurts or fears into present issues or situations with others. However, our sensitivities are [...]

Relationships: As We Evolve Our Relationships Improve – Part 1/32022-07-30T03:34:06+00:00

Understanding the Unconscious Influences that Run Our Lives

2022-05-27T21:24:53+00:00

Our Unconscious Influences are our attitudes, biases, habitual thought and reactive patterns, and the inner beliefs that we unknowingly erected from past experiences, what we witnessed, and/or appropriated from others that are now part of our emotional makeup. Our Unconscious Influences can have a positive effect on our lives and perceptions, or a negative one, And they act upon us without our consent. If our Unconscious Influences are negative, they may cause us to misperceive things, others, or situations and trigger us to think and act in automatic, habitual, aggressive, or protective ways. When our Unconscious Influences hold false perceptions, we develop needs to try to uphold them and strategies to defend them.  We project these onto others or different situations in many ways. See below for the link to my companion post "Worksheet: Connecting the Dots ..." A Few Examples of how Our Unconscious Influences May Play Out If our early life was characterized by an impoverished background and powerlessness, we may... ?Have constructed attitudes and belief systems to avoid being poor so that we do not feel disempowered in our in life. These may manifest as a strong need to be successful in life - no matter what ... and ?Push everyone in our lives aside. ?We may align only with successful people or those we deem can help us get ahead. ?We may marry for money. Although many of us may have dreamt of marrying for money—after all having an easy lifestyle is very appealing, most of us don’t fall into that trap. ??????? If a sense of victimization typified our early life experience as a result of having maybe, an abusive parent, we may ... ?Have become controlling or overly aggressive to avoid being hurt or becoming a victim in life. ?When overly aggressive, we cause conflict in our relationships. ?If our innate character is quiet we may have internalized these earlier hurtful emotions and become passive-aggressive as a protective strategy. Further internalizing new hurts and pains, we become more disempowered in life. ??????? This post is based in concepts in my books, Your Journey to Peace  ..., and Why We Are the Way We Are  About my Books I also offer a variety of Writing Services ??????? Here's a Personal Example My mother was a 1950s housewife who was unhappy, distant, and morose. She alienated herself from life and didn’t find joy in anything. Because my father was an aggressive, loud bully, she fell into a poor-me, passive, victim mentality. (She actually had many medical issues, including an unrelated thyroid all her life that affected her, but I didn't know that when growing up. I was hurt by her being emotionally distant, and I hated her morose, poor-me attitudes. So, when I married at nineteen and had my first child just as I turned twenty-three, I decided there was NO WAY I was going to be a meek housewife; I associated this with being weak and a victim of one’s circumstances. While that was a [...]

Understanding the Unconscious Influences that Run Our Lives2022-05-27T21:24:53+00:00

The Unfolding of Our Life Purpose

2022-02-15T05:10:07+00:00

From the highest perspective, our life purpose is to connect more fully to our True Self – to connect more fully to love. Connected to this love, we can feel love more deeply and can more easily express the Qualities of Love towards others and out into the world. Whether through a soul urging or we simply want to better ourselves, once we begin on our path to self-improvement we connect more fully to our True Self – and to the love it holds. We feel better, more peaceful, and become more empowered. We create more harmony around us. And our relationships improve. The Cavern between Us and Others Is in Direct Relationship  to the Cavern between Us and Our True Self  The path to bettering ourselves and becoming our Best Self is twofold” We must embrace what soothes and invigorates our soul – which allows the love within our hearts to grow. We must remove any blocks to the love that is held within our hearts. To soothe and invigorate our soul, we may start to meditate, do yoga, view, listen to, or partake in uplifting material, embrace what brings us joy, or spend time (or more time) in the comforting arms of nature, To remove the blocks to love, we must recognize, acknowledge, and address any Unconscious Influences that may be keeping us from accessing the love within. Connecting more deeply with love, we start to live life from a higher perspective. Our existence takes on more meaning, and our life purpose starts to unfold. Our ideas of how to live life start to shift. Being attuned to our True Self and keeping our minds open will allow us to hear what our soul is whispering to us and keep us open to new possibilities. And often, the path our life now takes and how our life purpose unfolds comes as a big surprise. Finding Our Life's Purposes Is Invigorating and Makes Us Feel Alive I spent most of my life having jobs to just get by or to keep myself sane from the perceived drudgery of being a housewife. As I moved along my journey to peace (the theme of all my writings) and started to let go of the Unconscious Influences that were holding me back from being my Best Self, my life purpose began to unfold. What I learned yearned for expression. And as I put pen to paper, words flowed out of me, and a new spark arose in me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself writing a book – especially one of a spiritual/self-help nature. My first book, Your Journey to Peace, Bridging the Gap Between Religion, Spirituality, Psychology, and Science, was born out of my personal journey to peace – and all I learned along the way While writing Your Journey to Peace …, I had periods of great excitement as I realized I could share what I have learned on my journey to peace – and possibly help [...]

The Unfolding of Our Life Purpose2022-02-15T05:10:07+00:00

Creating Loving Feelings, December 2021 Newsletter Message

2022-01-28T17:23:24+00:00

This post is taken from my December 2021 Newsletter Message. (Sign up to receive my monthly messages - and to read my past ones is below, as is the link to My Writing Services) The December theme, Creating Loving Feelings, was from an essay I wrote a few years ago for The Love Foundation, for which I received an honorable mention?. I tweaked it a little to reflect the Holiday Season and the impact the current state of the world may be having on us and our ability to feel joy. ??? Most of us aspire to feel good, be positive, and express love out into the world. However, sometimes we cannot feel love in our hearts – at least not enough to be joyful, happy, and contented, or loving towards others. Even if we are usually calm, loving, and are a positive person, personal stress and stresses from outside sources – like what we have recently been experiencing with the restrictions put upon us – dull our senses. Feelings of joy and happiness and our sense of aliveness may weaken. For many of us, our ability to connect to loving feelings is fragile and can easily be upset. ??? All my writing is based on themes from my books: Your Journey to Peace …,  and Why We Are the Way We Are, See below for info on my upcoming books, Overcome Your Unconscious Influences..., and Relationship Intelligence ... As well as my spiritual/personal development writing, I also offer Writing Services see My Writing Services Page To stay updated on book releases (and to read my past messages) Sign up for My Newsletter ??? We were created to live connected to love, effortlessly tapping into joy, and naturally expressing love – and its supportive qualities like fairness, sharing, and compassion outwards into the world. See my post The Qualities of Love. However, at some point in humanity's history, negativity arose. As this played out, our connection to positive and uplifting ways of experiencing and expressing life weakened. As time passed, harmful and disempowering ways of approaching life and others became the norm: our default position. Because of What We Experienced, or Were Exposed to in the Past, Our Connection to Loving Feelings May Be Weak. or Even Blocked ?Some of us were victims of how the negativity played out in others. As they abused, criticized, or belittled us, or were unsupportive of us emotionally, mentally, or physically, our hearts hardened, and we unconsciously erected protective and defensive mechanisms to protect our hearts and emotional world. ?Others of us inherited the negative ways of being from our families and cultures. We learned to view the world through a lens of judgment, biases, and competition: to battle rather than be compassionate and cooperative. To be suspicious of others different than us. Whatever caused us to disconnect from loving feelings, the protective and defensive mechanisms we erected, or any judgment, biases, and competitive ways of approaching life we adopted, habitual reactions and limiting beliefs [...]

Creating Loving Feelings, December 2021 Newsletter Message2022-01-28T17:23:24+00:00

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