Popularity

 

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. -Albert Einstein

Why do I seek to be popular? I want to be loved. I want you to like me, and this desire to be liked often makes me hypocritical. In the last few years, as I've danced more and more in Spirit, I find that I'm moving closer to honesty. I still want you to like me, but I need to tell the truth. My truth is who I am.When I betray my truth and seek to appease the majority, I'm uncomfortable. Spirit is making me more real. Spirit is feeding integrity into my life. Spirit makes my life enjoyable.

I want to be popular, but not at the expense of truth.

On this day of your life

 

I believe God wants you to know ...   ... that your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.   Kahlil Gibran said that, and he was right. Listen, therefore, to your heart. Cultivate the ability to do this. Practice it. Produce it. Perfect it.   It is not that difficult. Just be quiet with yourself. And for heaven's sake, stop listening to your mind. You will not find the truth there. You may find the answer, but it will not be the truth unless it coincides with the answer in your heart.   You think there is more to know about life than this, but there is not. Your heart holds the key. Your heart holds the wisdom. Your heart holds the future. Your mind knows nothing but the past. It imagines the future will be just like yesterday, so it makes its decisions based on that. Only your heart can see beyond memory's horizon.

Making Conscious Decisions (OM)

 

Our lives belong to us, and so do our decisions. Just because an idea or way of doing things is popular doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone. However, part of the way that something becomes popular is that many of us don’t take the time to determine what’s right for us; we simply do what most of the people we know are doing. In this way, our decisions about life are made by default, which means they aren’t what we call conscious decisions. There may be many other options available, but we don’t always take the time to explore them. This may be the result of feeling overwhelmed or pressured by family, peers, and humanity at large, to do things their way, the way things have always been done. Regardless of the cause, it is important that, as often as we can, we decide for ourselves what to do with our lives rather than just drift along on the current of popular opinion. It is not always easy to make decisions that go against the grain. Many people feel threatened when those close to them make choices divergent from the ones they are making. Parents and grandparents may be confused and defensive when we choose to raise our children differently from the way they raised us. Friends may feel abandoned if we decide to change our habits or behavior. Meanwhile, on our side of the fence, it’s easy to feel frustrated and defensive when we feel unsupported and misunderstood simply because we are thinking for ourselves. It can be exhausting to have to explain and re-explain our points of view and our reasons. This is where gentleness, openness, and tolerance come into play. It helps if we are calmly persistent, consistent, and clear as we communicate to those around us why we are making the choices we are making. At the same time, we have the right to say that we are tired of talking about it and simply need our choices to be respected. Our lives belong to us and so do our decisions. Those who truly love us will stand by us and support our choices, never mind what’s popular.

Three Wise Little Monkeys (KB)

 

Karen Berg
AUGUST 28, 2022

 Like 18   Comments 2

This article is also available in: español | Deutsch | Português Brasileiro | italiano | français

This article on the portion of the week was previously published in 2020.

I'm sure you've all seen and used the little monkey emoji that have their eyes, ears, and mouths covered. But have you ever considered where they come from and what it means? The origins for these three fellas are a bit obscure. They are Japanese in origin, depicted on the walls of a Shinto shrine, but have probable Buddhist and even Hindu roots as well. Although in our Western culture, they usually have a negative connotation in that they describe someone who would turn a blind eye to wrongdoing, their original meaning is that it is wise to "see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil." (Sometimes there is a fourth one, by the way, with his hands crossed portraying the "do no evil.")

This week's portion is called Shoftim meaning "Judges," and in the Torah we read about the details of how the judicial system was to be carried out. Rav Berg would often teach regarding this portion that there are gates a soul goes through upon leaving this world. At each one, there is a guard, who either lets the soul through or not. These gates also correspond to the gates we have in our own being – our eyes, mouths, noses, etc. – the openings through which we perceive our reality.

Have you ever found that when you don't like someone for whatever reason it seems that everything they do, even if it is totally benign, is wrong? Most likely we've all been there. The reason for it is that we actually don't sense reality as it is. Our eyes see or our ears hear something, but everything is filtered through our mind. In the case of an individual you don't like, you see them through an internal lens that makes everything they do distasteful.

None of us are truly objective. To one extent or another, our perception has been adulterated. Our way of viewing the world is formed by a number of things – the environment we grew up in, society, religion, culture, belief systems etc. Yet it says in the Bible that when we leave this world, we won't only be judged by our deeds, but also by our senses, by how we perceived reality. So what are we to do?

To be spiritually conscious is to live with an awareness of what we let in and out of our eyes, ears, and mouths. We are gifted with the power to choose to see what is right in others rather than what is wrong with them. We can be aware of the opportunity to say a kind word about someone and to refrain from hearing gossip. Even if there is an individual we totally don't jive with at all, we can find at least one good trait and make that our focus, realizing that we create a blessing for ourselves through that effort.

Being conscious of your gates does not mean that you put yourself in the way of harmful people or give up your common sense and good judgment. But what it does mean is that you consider what you are going to say before you say it, or step back and consider another point of view before reacting.

It is so quick and easy to approach a person, to size them up and in an instant compare ourselves to them or find fault (although this usually has more to do with our own insecurity than anything else). To see with what we call in Hebrew an "ayin tov" (a good eye) means to perceive with kindness, to remember that there is a Divine spark in every one of God's children. It seems like a small effort, inconsequential maybe, but when we see the Light in others, our own light shines brighter in the world.

NUGGETS OF WISDOM - 826

 

• ·       Treat whatever happens as wholly natural; not novel or hard to deal with; but familiar and easily handled. - Marcus Aurelius

  ·       “The geographical solution doesn't work. You must try to generate happiness within yourself. If you aren't happy in one place, chances are you won't be happy in any place.”
  ~ Ernie Banks

  ·       "Any being on any world in any system of any universe may become a star student, may aspire to join some corps of celestial astronomers. The only requisites are: continuing life and sufficient knowledge of the worlds of space."

  ·       Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying. - Saint Vincent de Paul

  ·       “If your mind is still, you can sense the peace that emanates from the earth.” — Eckhart Tolle

  ·       "The impulse of friendship transcends all convictions of duty, and the service of a friend for a friend can never be called a sacrifice."

  ·       It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. – Confucius

  ·       "The true pattern of temporal civilization is the mirror reflection of the eternal order of heaven." – Confucianism

  ·       Possessions are usually diminished by possession. - Friedrich Nietzschee

  ·       "That which the enlightened and reflective human imagination of spiritual teaching and leading wholeheartedly and unselfishly wants to do and be, becomes measurably creative in accordance with the degree of mortal dedication to the divine doing of the Father's will."

  
  

Wisdom Quote

 

Courage

 

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." Amelia Earhart

How true this saying is. Whatever peace has been achieved in this world has been created by men and women who have shown great courage. Not only did they risk their lives, but many gave their lives for the cause they championed. Along the way they also suffered ostracism and persecution. But they could do no other.This is the physical reality of Say Yes to Your Spirit. It is the lived-out drama of what it means to dance in God. And the world has changed. Racism, sexism, homophobia, witch burning, slavery, and many more exploitations have shriveled in the world, although they have not been completely obliterated, because great men and women showed courage. Celebrate the power of the heavenly Spirit.

I affirm courage in my life.

On this day of your life

 

 

I believe God wants you to know ...   ... that what a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.   Abraham Maslow said that, and he was right. Inside of every living thing is an inner drive, a Divine impulse, to completely and wondrously self-express. That is, to be what it is, totally.   What is it you have always wished to be or do? Make this the Time of Your Beginning, and the Moment of Your Manifestation.   Don't wait another day!

 

The Sacred Sisterhood (OM)

 

Only women can make the change in how women are seen, not just by other women but by the world at large. As women embrace the fullness of who they are as individuals, they may find themselves supporting other women, helping others to reach the level of inner comfort and outer freedom that they themselves have found. Among those who are less sure of themselves and their place in the world, it may be more common to criticize other women than to seek their help. But there are things that a woman can only learn from another woman, as there are things about being a man that can only be learned from other men. We all recognize that we have much to learn from each other regardless of gender, but sometimes we could use a supportive role model that gives us a more precise example of what and who we can become. There was a time where women stood together in a bond of sisterhood, women supporting women. It is only natural that the pendulum swings out of balance for a while so that we may have the experience of what we do not want. It is up to women to bring the pendulum back into balance and bring back the sacred sisterhood we yearn for at our core. If we envision a world where women support each other and help each other find their place in an ever-changing world, then we can become the change we want to see. Jealousy, envy, criticism, and judgment are refuges for the insecure. As we help others to become self-assured, we create a world in which all people help each other, regardless of gender. Only women can make the change in how women are seen and understood, not just by other women but by the world at large. The way we speak about each other to other women and to the men in our lives informs everyone to treat us with the respect that all women, and all people, deserve.

The 5 Painful Childhood Patterns That Make You Prone To Narcissists

 Many of you are incredibly conscious and emotionally intelligent people – that’s why you love interacting in our wonderful Thriver Community!

I also know that many of you are aware, in many cases, that our childhoods are what sets us up for narcissistic abuse. This is not even necessarily about having a narcissistic parent – which of course is a contributor.

Rather, many of the childhood patterns I’m talking about today were all “normal” parenting, and our parents thought they were doing a great job. It wasn’t their fault – there has been very little emphasis or training in regard to conscious parenting.

One of my greatest desires with this article is that we can all learn from this and adjust our parenting, so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes of our forebears.

So, what are the 5 EXACT main patterns which have made us prone to narcissists?

Today I want to share with you the specific patterns that I believe have caused us to unconsciously be attracted and be attractive to narcissists. These patterns are also responsible for our enmeshment with narcissists, why we remain with them and why we keep obsessing about them – no matter how badly they treat us.

Okay – let’s dive in!

 

Number 1 – Trained To Distrust Our Intuition

Even the most wholesome of households can teach their children not to trust their intuition.

Imagine this, you know that Mum and Dad are fighting and you are disturbed and ask a parent “What’s happening, what’s wrong?” and they look you straight in the face and say, “Nothing’s wrong.”

This parent is your “God” they are your barometer of “truth”. So, you learn you must have it wrong and start to distrust what you are feeling. You are being trained to believe what other people say, rather than what your inner voice tells you.

Clearly, in toxic families there are many lies, deceptions and manipulations which take this to an even worse level. How can you know what is real and what isn’t? You want to believe the lies, because they are more comfortable than the truth. You start lying to yourself as a means of emotional protection.

If there is a parent that is modelling refusing to own up, be honest and take responsibility for their behaviour then this is an even greater “teaching” about how to disconnect and lie to oneself.

Parents may have believed they were protecting us, by lying about the truth, or they believed that they needed to be the authority and should never admit that they may have been “wrong”.

All of this takes us away from our internal GPS which is our God Protection System – the inner wise voice that is our true authority.

In narcissistic relationships we ignore our inner GPS, assign the narcissist as the authority and we doubt ourselves when we know things are “off” and that we are being lied to.

Then we lie to ourselves with applied cognitive dissonance to try to make the false and traumatising realities bearable.

By not connecting with our Inner Truth, facing it and making decisions based on it, we can’t pull away, stay away and look after ourselves.

 

Number 2 – Having Our Uniqueness Ignored

As a child if we tried to have a voice and assert what did or didn’t feel right for us, or wished to express our unique and individual personality, we may have been invalidated and just told to be someone else’s version of what they believed we should be.

This is your parent not seeing you as a developing flesh and blood autonomous being – rather more as an extension of themselves.

The message we received is that we are not valid, important and worthy of being “ourselves”. Rather, we have to go along to get along, agree with someone else’s version of who we are, and if we don’t, we are bad, unlovable and defective.

Of course, children need boundaries, routine, and limits, but when they aren’t allowed to be a child, express, explore, play, and dream in age-appropriate ways, and are encouraged to develop a unique self – the deeper internalised message is “I am unacceptable”. Then toxic shame accumulates in our Inner Being, meaning we subjugate our truths, dreams, inspirations, and visions for other people at our own expense.

Narcissists love this – they want people who are not self-defined, who don’t stand in their own dreams, visions and life directions, and who are always trying to establish their love, value and worth via others.

This way the narcissist can demand more and more and more from you – effectively exploiting you and emptying you out, whilst never recognising you as a flesh and blood autonomous being – but rather a tool to serve their insatiable demands.

 

 

Number 3 – Shutting Down Our Negative Feelings

This is possibly one of the most disastrous patterns – being told not to feel and express negative emotions.

We were taught, “Don’t be angry”, “Don’t cry”, “Go away, I don’t want to hear about it”, “I’m too busy to listen to you”, “I’m too damaged myself to care about your feelings”, “If you want to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about” and, “You’re hurt! Look how much you hurt me!”

Even the seemingly benign message of, “Don’t think about it, just go and do something that makes you happy” is also intensely damaging.

What this all amounts to is unresolved inner trauma.

These painful emotions had nowhere to go; they were not met, held and validated, which means you haven’t been able to let them go. They built up and toxically affected you with anxiety and depression, and nervous system and physical illnesses, and painful emotional triggers that kept going off causing you to maladapt to try to avoid being triggered or lashing out to try to diffuse these triggers in other ways.

One of the most powerful attractors of negative and traumatising people in our lives is having unresolved negative and painful traumas wedged in our Inner Being.

This doesn’t mean that you are a bad person, you could be a lovely individual with a really beautiful Soul and integrity, however if you have a lot of unresolved traumas within you because you didn’t receive the allowing and the validation of your negative emotions and weren’t taught how to self-sooth and let your traumatised feelings go, then you have not evolved beyond shaming and blaming yourself for your emotions.

Which means you disconnect from them, instead of supporting and loving yourself through them to completion, and you beat yourself up for having them.

This means you will have more people come into your life who blame and shame you, hurt you and invalidate your emotions. You will also struggle to accept people in your life who can see, acknowledge and support you emotionally – simply because you are not as yet doing this for yourself.

You can’t heal beyond your traumas and then continue to hold other people responsible for them. This is a total setup for victimhood without the shift to healing and breaking free from being victimised.

This is a major unconscious attraction force that occurs with narcissists and brings them into your life. They are the ultimate people to invalidate you, traumatise you and trigger you with negative emotions so that they can flip the script, vindicate themselves as “the good one” and accuse you of being the damaged, defective one.

 

Number 4 – Fear Of Abandonment

This is another biggie. It starts as a baby. Our much wiser tribal communities wrap up babies and swaddle them on their bodies continuously – allowing the child to disconnect and explore its own Life Force and environment, without the mother’s protection, when it’s emotionally ready to.

This creates an Inner Identity of safety, connection, wholeness and therefore confidence. The argument is that this makes the baby demanding and co-dependent on the mother.

Rather, it is a baby who is crying, left without support and contact and therefore intensely traumatised who establishes the powerful inner trauma programs of “No one is coming”, “I’m all alone” and, “Without someone else I may not survive.”

Then as we get older there are numerous ways the abandonment programs are increased.

Emotionally being invalidated. Not being heard and protected when something awful has happened to you. Not being believed regarding events and then not wanting to share trials and tribulations because you feel like you may be blamed for them – rather than be supported.

Or maybe as a child you were literally abandoned – left to fend for yourself because of having selfish, immature, sick or neglectful parents.

When we have unresolved abandonment traumas, we do not realise that we are still a broken, unsafe inner child trying to find a “parent” to do it differently this time.

This makes you naturally attracted to people who purport to see you, hold you and meet you intensely. People who you think won’t abandon you but are using your abandonment fears against you to bond quickly, enmesh with you and start extracting your Life Force and resources.

This is what narcissists do, and then they turn the tables and start punishing you with the terror of abandonment constantly – by threatening to leave you.

This rips these wounds horrifically open again – whilst we cling and try to force narcissists to stop doing it. We can’t pull away, stay away and look after ourselves because of our terror of disconnection from them.

Fear of abandonment is a deadly trauma bond with a narcissist. It makes you feel like without this person you may die. You can easily mistake this for love, but it isn’t.

It is fully ignited terror of unhealed abandonment wounds.

 

Number 5 – Destruction Of Boundaries

As a child if you were forced to eat everything on your plate and share your toys, and made to acquiesce regarding your space, property, or body, including what went into it, then your boundaries were violated.

Maybe your parents distrusted you and ransacked your bedroom. Did they read your diary?

These are simple examples. Naturally I could go on with much more. Many people in this community have had boundary violation at extreme levels personally, including sexually – from their parents, family members or other adults that they were told to trust.

There are many damaging patterns here – the first is to not grow up seeing yourself as a sovereign self-defined Being with rights. This can cause you to give away your personal autonomy and property easily, to anyone you see as an outside authority, against your will.

This plays directly into the hands of narcissists who are all about exploiting your Life Force and resources, and stripping you of your sovereign rights, for their gain.

Also, the violation of your Being, which boundary destruction is, causes intense inner trauma. This then makes you an energetic match for the familiarity of connecting with people who will disrespect your boundaries in the future – such as narcissists.

It also makes you fearful when trying to stand up for yourself and say “No”, risking disapproval from those who seek to exploit you – because as a child you were powerless to set strong and healthy boundaries, and suffered immensely when you tried to.

Narcissists are highly skilled at seeking out people with scanty, weak and non-existent boundaries, including people who have high levels of tolerance to boundary violating behaviour – because it is their childhood programming.

 

In Conclusion

Today I wanted to drill down into the 5 foundational childhood patterns which disconnect us from our TRUE Life Force and make us prone to FALSE Life Force (anti-life), which is narcissists.

These 5 traumatic childhood patterns create the fragmenting of the four foundational pillars of your Inner Identity – Love, Approval, Security and Survival.

What is your solution?

Healing yourself within … that’s the only solution.

But here is the big challenge with narcissistic abuse … we are so traumatised, incensed and devastated in our “proneness” that we remain hooked into narcissists. What I see, repeatedly (and I experienced this myself) is even if you get away, you can still suffer from unresolved obsession about the narcissist indefinitely.

It doesn’t allow the space or focus on yourself in order to heal within.

This is why I created a structured system for you to follow, to detach from the narcissist, turn your focus inwards and be supported to heal everything that I have talked about today, and so much more.

This is my Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP). It is the exact process that I used to quickly and powerfully heal these 5 childhood patterns (and many others).

You deserve a life without this trauma, so that like me and many other people in this community, you too can Thrive.

Let me know in your comments below …

NUGGETS OF WISDOM - 825

 

• ·       The humblest is the greatest. To display humility isn’t weak. It’s strong and sure and brave. - Robin Sharma

  ·       A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers. - Helen Keller

  ·       He whom prosperity humbles, and adversity strengthens, is the true hero. - Josh Billings

  ·       Today I want to be my own hero.

  ·       "Modern men and women of intelligence evade the religion of Jesus because of their fears of what it will do to them — and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers."

  ·       Wherever you are, be there totally. - Eckhart Tolle

  ·       "It is the most unhappy people who most fear change." - Mignon McLaughlin

  ·       May I always discover the courage to change the things I can.

  ·       "While there is a divine and ideal form of government, such cannot be revealed but must be slowly and laboriously discovered by the men and women of each planet throughout the universes of time and space."

  ·       Don’t try to steer the river. - Deepak Chopra

  ·       "The moral will creatures of the evolutionary worlds are always bothered with the unthinking question as to why the all-wise Creators permit evil and sin. They fail to comprehend that both are inevitable if the creature is to be truly free."

  
  

Wisdom Quote

 

Influence

 

IT'S A REALLY BIG SHIFT.

We can shift from obsessing over how we can dominate to concentrating on how we can help.

Life becomes infinitely simpler when I focus more on having a positive influence on an outcome than I do on trying to control it.

On this day of your life

 

I believe God wants you to know ...   ... that nothing is ever as bleak as it looks. Everything, in fact, is a blessing.   I know, I know... that is sometimes very hard to believe. How can a sudden, calamitous event in one's life be a blessing? It takes a longer view, I know, to see this wonderful truth. Even a diagnosis of a terminal illness could be seen as another gift from life when experienced from a particular perspective.   It is an opportunity for us to express once again, at the next highest level, Who We Really Are. And, if it turns out that, at the Soul level, we have indeed decided to leave our present physicality in this particular way and time, that, too, would be an expression of our Highest Self.   And so, all "calamities" are blessings, not yet understood by the Mind. God knew this was a good day for you to hear this...