Dreams and Failures
Recently two major movies have influenced those of us consciously seeking to understand ourselves, our world and the universe we have created. The first, What The Bleep Do We Know came out in 2004 and after much rejection, slowly moved it’s way into success finally becoming the fifth highest grossing documentary ever! The second film, ‘The Secret’ just become available in 2006 through private distribution. Both films deal with how our thoughts and our feelings affect and shape our world but each approaches this universal truth in a different way. If you have not seen these films, it would certainly serve you on your journey to watch them both as soon as possible. I have seen each one multiple times and get more and more out of them every time I watch. I also believe that on an unconscious level, they act much the same as installing a new program in your computer. Suddenly there is so much more available to help you accomplish your goals and live happy, prosperous lives.
When What The Bleep came out, I was thrilled because for many years I have learned and then taught that emotions hold a big key to our healing. They are valuable life tools once we stop being afraid of them and learn to use them rather than allow them to use us. This movie shows scientifically what I have suspected and worked with for some time. When you have a powerful experience, your create an emotion and this alerts a particular location in your brain called the hypothalamus. This gland then secretes neurotransmitters (molecules of emotion), which travel through your body attaching themselves to your cells and even more specifically to your DNA. They attach themselves to a place in your cells where they are use to traveling when this feeling occurs. This is a kind of like always taking the same road home from work without even paying attention to where you are going. It is almost automatic because it is what you always do. It is your habit or pattern in response to a particular task.
When the neurotransmitters attach themselves to the cell’s DNA, it activates a response and using your feelings as an indicator, you respond to that stimulus as you always have. In other words, you recognize the feeling and you activate the same response that feeling usually creates.
‘Oh yes, I recognize that anger that comes up when my husband acts like that. I know how to respond. Just like I always do.’ In the case of a good pattern, this is just fine. But, where you are stuck in dysfunctional behavior, it keeps you repeating unhealthy responses over and over again.
So, as the movie indicates, if you catch your feeling before it completes it’s cycle activating old, unhealthy patterns, you can redirect it through your thoughts and feelings to respond in a new way, thus creating a new, healthier pattern. This is how I have worked with people for quite some time. I help them move into an emotion and then redirect its energy to create a new response. I was overjoyed when this movie came out. It follows a story line of a young woman who had very painful experience years back and had continued to interpret her life through that experience creating more and more pain. After learning how thoughts and feelings had affected her responses, she is triggered into the same old anger and flips into a rage during which she breaks into tears and, very consciously, begins to love that angry self and bring all of herself into her heart. The movie then shows how her life changes around this new response to an uncomfortable emotion. It is an awesome movie with lots of interviews from credible scientists, psychologist and even psychics. Often times it takes people several times of watching the film to begin to understand it. I feel that may be because the ego goes into so much resistance. Imagine taking responsibility for your own feelings and using them responsibly rather than blaming others. Now that’s scary!
After digesting What The Bleep for a few years, along comes, The Secret. This movie rather ingeniously reveals the magic and awesome results behind the universal ‘Law of Attraction’ and shows us how to put it into motion in our lives. Basically our thoughts create our reality which most of us already know. If we dwell on what we don’t want, we create more and more of it. Instead, if you think about, visualize and feel what you do want to create in your life, you are able to manifest these things. It is a law of physics that like attracts like. I really enjoyed this movie’s upbeat presentation of putting this principal into action in life. It is inspiring and even though I already knew and understood the principal, the film put my emotions behind the knowledge and served as a reset of sorts, reprogramming some old thinking I had become stuck in. I have watched it several times since for that very reason. The film takes me from a destructive thought pattern and helps me restructure my thoughts and feelings to accomplish my goals.
The one thing that I found difficult about The Secret is that I felt it did not adequately address how you get from a depressed and negative state to be able to feel and think about what you are creating and change your thoughts and feelings. Easier said than done. The movie does address the fact that, just as much as thinking these wonderful thoughts, you also need to feel the truth of them. In other words, as I have always known, an affirmation without the ‘feeling’ of truth behind it has little chance of creating the change you are looking for. When I watched the movie with my son who, at the time, was very down and depressed with no job, lots of bills and college loans hanging over his head he said, ‘Yes, Mom, I can be inspired by this movie and I want to get from where I am to be that person who can think and feel that way but exactly ‘how’ do I do that.’
All of us know how hard it is to think positively about life when we are in the midst of sometimes painful and difficult life lessons, which, as spiritual beings, we know we are here to learn. As I thought about this, so many things came to me. If all people need to do is think positive thoughts and visualize their dreams then perhaps I have been misguiding them into their wounded hearts. Could it be by just changing, if they can, they never need go to the places I teach them to travel? How does someone get from the down, depressed ‘Point A’ to the happy, successful ‘Point B’? Should we expunge all negative thoughts from ourselves as quickly and efficiently as we can? Something in me says that, if we do, they will return to bite our butts at some point.
Today, while having a meal with my family, we began to talk about the principals supporting both movies and again all these questions surfaced. Those who know my work, know that I don’t choose to buy into dualities such as negative/ positive, good / bad, right / wrong. I believe the way to enlightenment, healing and oneness is by finally moving out of all the dualistic thinking we have been stuck in since we originally separated from creator. I believe that we are being called on to bring all dualities together into integration. To me, telling everyone to think only positive thoughts runs over your wounded heart on the way to becoming prosperous, successful and happy. After our brunch, I was cleaning the house when suddenly I was filled with such a wonderful feeling of contentment. All those questions that had been playing a mind game with me evaporated and I moved into a place of great understanding and acceptance. The answer lies in integrating the messages of both movies!
By taking the ‘how to’ consciously shift your patterns using your emotional responses taught in What The Bleep and applying them to the ‘law of attraction’ demonstrated in The Secret, you can truly create an integrated template and a great new life tool to actuate your dreams. Ingenious! Now we really have something. Of course, as it always goes with me, as soon as I get a piece and am feeling clear, my soul steps right up and gives me a test involving my new belief and my own healing journey.
So, the next morning, bright and early, as I was putting the finishing touches on this article, the phone rang and the test had begun. I had been energizing the principals in The Secret quite consciously for several months and feeling very positive and upbeat when’ BOOM! My failures, past and present, reared their ugly heads bringing deep feelings of ‘poor me’ and ‘Why doesn’t anything I ever initiate to reach my dream succeed?’ Without going into all the details as they are only relevant to me, I can say that the same old emotion came up. I am a failure at achieving my dream. I should just give up. This is so painful for me. And there I stayed until I reread this article again and consciously began to follow my own advice.
My past dysfunctional pattern would have been to flip into the higher perspective, which is that I would tell myself that the failures aren’t important because I am doing such a great work of service Spiritually. On a higher level what I created succeeded. From there I would bury the pain and grieving connected with the failed dream. I would move on to conquer new vistas without even realizing that the hidden pain was sabotaging all my new vistas also. Just like the lady in What The Bleep, I wasn’t even aware that this old pain was trying to get my attention so I could feel the feelings of sadness and grief connected to it and redirect them to a healthier response.
You probably have already guessed what I did. Right in the midst of my pity party I was able to identify the pattern from the same old feeling so I just remained in stillness breathing into the feelings of pity and sadness. I allowed the wells of ancient grief for all loses to wash over me and I began embracing myself. I felt my courage in doing all I had done. I understood the sacrifices I had made to grow. I began to value all the lessons those failures brought me and yes, I still felt an ancient sorrow but it was the kind of sorrow that felt comforting to embrace. It supported rather diminished. I did this for a whole day and when I went into my final evening silence before going to bed, I was eager to keep stepping forward with this dream that only the other morning I had labeled a failure. The ones of the past were truly only failures because I deserted myself and moved on so I would not feel the pain of my own disappointment.
The next day I was back into activating the ‘law of attraction’ in my life but from a higher and more blissful place. I am still energizing my dream and my new pattern shows me that when I feel this emotion again, its time to take another step forward with courage into my dream, not put my dream aside and move on to a new one. I am feeling I am now more able to be the true co-creator of my destiny. I have long known how to transmute difficult emotions into a more constructive form but I never knew that in the process of doing that, I kept repeating my old sabotage. At this moment, I feel clear. There is still sorrow as I allow the past to present itself. That is OK. I continue to embrace it rather than push it aside. Perhaps, even I can truly learn ‘To Love It All!’