by Ross Bishop
Life is not what you probably think it is. We do not just exist to reproduce and die. As you go through your days getting the kids to school or deciding where to go for dinner, you are also actively involved in developing your consciousness. That is the reason you have come to Earth.
Fundamentally, you have come because you do not love yourself. “You do not deserve to be loved.” “You are inadequate.” “You are unworthy.” . . . Sound familiar? Whatever your beliefs, they create roadblocks to being at peace. They create disharmony with the greater harmony of The Universe. (And none of them are true! Truths just are, there is nothing about them to “believe” in.)
God doesn’t create the disharmony in your life, you do. You create conflicts either within yourself or with others. Everything in life revolves around that concept and the behaviors you have created to avoid dealing with it. As a result, you encounter obstacles as you go through life.
This is not punishment from God. These are warning notices that something is amiss in your belief system. And if you persist, you are going to experience pain as The Universe tries to wake you up to what you are doing! When asked the meaning of life, The Buddha replied, “Life is pain.” Contained in those three simple words are layers of deeper meaning.
Each step in the life process has been carefully designed to nudge you to find your way home, to find that place in you where your truth and happiness reside. Nothing about it is accidental. Nothing is random. Most of the time you focus on the conflict, but each instance also offers you the opportunity to look at the false beliefs you carry – especially about yourself – that drive the process.
We rarely take these opportunities. We focus instead on dealing with the situation or avoiding our pain. We rarely address its origins. When we react to a situation something occurs in us, something so profound and powerful that it shuts down our natural selves. It creates an artificial persona in its place.
This thing shuts down our natural warmth and caring. It causes us to wall off from others and from ourselves and to be unkind to both. This force is incredibly powerful. It has tumbled kingdoms and destroyed armies. It affects saints and sinners, rich and poor, powerful and powerless. It recognizes neither race, religion, or political boundary. It humbles even the bravest warriors. It is the single most dominant factor affecting all of human history.
That something is fear. Fear stifles our passion and causes us to be miserable. Fear keeps us from touching and expressing the essential beauty of who we are. It also inhibits us from seeing the beauty in others. Fear pushes us to do hurtful things. It drives us to be bigoted and unkind. Fear causes us to hate. Fear drives materialism, greed, and the lust for power.
Fear manifests when we experience separation – separation from others, separation from life and especially separation from ourselves. When we are separated, we are out of alignment with The Universe, which leads inevitably to stress and pain. Underlying the pain is the fear that we will not be, cannot be, or do not deserve to be, loved.
All this then begs the larger question: “What are we afraid of?” What force is so powerful that it can shut down our natural compassion? The answer is that we are not anchored to the truth. Our table is too easily upset. When challenged, we do not operate from the strength of our beingness. We do not accept our true selves.
Have you noticed that very few people seem to have had easy childhoods? Does it not seem odd that with all the love people claim to have for their children they usually seem to mess up as parents? You cannot raise a child without getting triggered by your unfinished issues. And that is the child’s gift to you. Your withholding love is your “gift” to the child.
So, as a child you start out believing the opposite of the truth, i.e. “I am not lovable,” “I am not worthy,” etc., to compensate for your inner feelings of “inadequacy.” You do not have the things you long for because you believe you do not deserve them.
But looking at events from the inside can be deceiving. Childhood plays a most significant role in the process of our learning. It perfectly sets us up for the work we came here to do. Unfortunately, this is usually done with a good bit of pain and suffering as we struggle to resolve the dichotomy between the Truth and what we have been led to believe.
And as you grew up, you learned to hide them, or better yet, hide behind, your “inadequacies.” You became “unlovable,” to compensate for your feelings of unworthiness. You shut vital parts of yourself away because you were taught they were unacceptable or that you were bad for having them.
You closed this “inadequate” part of yourself off in order to not be hurt, criticized or embarrassed. As a result, you created a whole approach to life based on those beliefs. The resulting tumult was created to help you see the folly of your thinking.
But to you, it didn’t matter that your beliefs were totally untrue, that is where you were. There was this big “hole” in you that you didn’t dare let anyone see. And so the conflict grew and continued. Today you are understandably reluctant to mess with what you have come to believe because part of you believes it is true! And yet the longing for peace and contentment drag on your life like sea anchors.
Eventually, you will come to realize that the things you came to believe about yourself in childhood were false and that the only way you are going to escape from the dilemma is to learn to love yourself. Life gives you the opportunity to realize that no one else can provide the love and support you need and although other people can make life better, they do not make it good.
And this is God’s great game. An utterly innocent child carries, unbeknownst to her, a set of vulnerabilities to certain things such as lovability or worthiness. She experiences conflicts with those as she grows up. This leads to the creation of a set of beliefs – all untrue – that will cause her trouble in life. In fact, she will experience enough trouble that eventually she will confront the beliefs she has assumed, discard them and end up holding almost by default, the truth about herself. And that completes what The Creator put her here for.
(excerpted from Healing The Shadow by Ross Bishop)
