Sundar,

I don’t usually visit the portal during the week. By some chance, I did visit today, so I am responding.

The first think I would say is, this is an extremely important and sensitive time in your life. Your first priority is to reduce stress and take care of yourself. Do whatever it is you do to de-stress – some Sukh-asana, meditation, talking to people who bring you peace of mind, listen to calming music, walking in nature… whatever. Just keep your stress down.

I really am a novice at Life School; have not gone to any off-site, or done the in-depth training. Like you, I still over index on thinking vs. feeling, and Trust is absent from the cast of characters I put on the field. So my response is probably not going to be in line with Gary’s teaching.

Maybe Doug or Luz or someone can guide you better in your current situation.

But for what it is worth, I will share a couple of things from what I have learned.
You quoted Gary’s teaching: “My interactions … provide me the opportunity to develop emotional awareness ….” And you continued on to say in this regard…, I don’t want to judge X or his nurse;

There are a million things wrong with the world and with how we treat oneanother. I am sure there are a million things the doctor and his nurse could have done better in this interaction. But you are not responsible for them. You cannot change them. You can only change you. You clap with both hands, so if you are honest you know you probably also had some role to play in how this interaction went down.

So, as I understand it, what Gary is asking you to do here is use this interaction to develop EMOTIONAL AWARENESS only about YOURSELF.

In similar circumstances, I try to get in touch with my feelings –am I feeling hurt, angry, discriminated against, judged…. Then I ask myself: When have I felt like this before? What is the common pattern? And I am amazed to find the same general pattern in how I feel people treat me with slight nuanced differences all the way to childhood!

So, then the question comes up: Is there something I do to generate this type of interaction with the other person? I keep my eyes compulsively inward on myself, not on what the other person should have done. This is the best I can do with feeling. I don’t have the recommended ability to feel tightness in the chest or butterflies in my stomach…but this examination with inward focus stands in for examining feelings for now.

Then comes the part where Gary talks about making responsible choices.
I want to separate the responsible choice about whether you should have procedure with doctor x or y. I am sure you will make a good choice there.

The responsible choice from a spiritual and self development perspective here is: Let’s assume through your above introspection you come to the realization that in your interaction with the nurse you were just a tiny bit over indexing on one of these things (just throwing out a range of possibilities): too persnickety, argumentative, abrupt, snippy, sarcastic, condescending….maybe you asked the right question but in the wrong tone…and why not, you were just given scary news, you were stressed, and we all react to stress poorly. Cut your self some clack, IF there is anything that you could have done differently.

For me making responsible choices in these kinds of situations is owning what I did wrong. Sometimes I will admit to the other person that I felt stressed and perhaps had the wrong reaction. Sometimes my pride gets in the way, I know, but I won’t admit to the other. I find sharing my fear and admitting my mistake usually works, because it allows the other person to also lay down their arms, and then we can discuss more calmly the next steps one human being to another.

Lastly, you ask should I only feel or also think. I don’t believe anyone recommends not to think at all. I think I mentioned letting your feeling muscle get as strong as your thinking muscle so they can work as equal partners. Just now, many of us have a pronounced limp in our walk!

Hope this helps! Good luck with your next discussion, and with the procedure. We will be thinking good thoughts for you.

Shelley

Dear Shelley,

Thank you for sharing your response to Doug. I sense your commitment to growth. Has this opportunity supported you in other areas of your life?

Love,
Kristen

Dear Doug,

I genuinely want to thank you for your lovingly coming forward to share your perspective with me after we both were left alone in today’s live-call small group.

Unfortunately for me your sharing got interrupted when a third person happened to enter into our small group without our knowledge, seemed to have heard some last part of what I was telling you, waited a while hearing the perspective you were sharing with me and then asked you whether you were coming from a frightened part of yours to feel good about yourself. Then she told us that she was leaving.

You started to wonder whether you were indeed coming from a frightened part of yours. We had to spend the time discussing that. As I asked you, how can another person identify whether your explanation to me comes from a frightened part or not? As I told you, Gary has taken up on himself the biggest responsibility of explaining the most difficult things to help us learn and apply. To ever question whether he comes from his frightened part to feel good about himself must be the worst thought ever. And, a small part of his effort you take up with your spiritual partner, namely me in this case. And, that is to be welcome. And, it is my responsibility anyway to analyze and understand the ones that I need to out of what you share, whether it is coming from a loving part or frightened part.

Then the third person came back with a fourth person.

I honestly thought there was a responsibility on somebody’s part to turn the system off and I didn’t want to delay that process. But, the third person said ours was the only small group that was still open and therefore entered to see what was happening. To see what was happening? And with a fourth person!

The unfortunate end result is that I couldn’t hear the perspective that you originally wanted to share with me.

So, how does this system work? Can anyone come into any small group without the knowledge of the current participants and interrupt anytime as they choose to?

I am nonplussed by what happened today. Am I the only one ignorant of this system? Do others happen to know this is how it works?

If you know the answers, please share. I value your spiritual partnership. Thank you in advance.

The Universe willing, if we ever get a chance to interact outside of this community board, I would love to hear the original perspective that you lovingly wanted to share with me. Thank you again.

With love and trust,
Sundar

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Sundar Naga.

Hi Kristen,

Thank you for the question.

This interaction has brought a greater understanding of myself and my MOs. I will share my journey here a bit. I do hope you read with compassion, and all my spiritual partners here will guide me further ?.

I come from a family of super smart people. I am not in the same category of smart as them overall, or more accurately, my smarts are of a different type than theirs (not scientific, mathematical…). I have scored in the top percentile in a competitive exam, and yet, there is a frightened part of my personality that says that was a fluke, or result of super hard work, you are not really smart. And in many of my interactions in the world, I have come to see, that my underlying motive is to prove subtly, or not so subtly, that I am smart, or to get acknowledgement from others that I am smart.

This interaction, and the constant questioning on this site, are you providing advice to feel better about yourself (which I hate, but more on that later), has brought this aspect of my MO in focus.

Each strong trait/MO has both advantages and disadvantages. While my need to constantly prove my smarts has brought me much material success, brought me to the US, gave me some career success, I am now seeing how this trait has been a disaster in my pursuit of being lovable and loved, in so many areas of my life.

I may be being a little bit harsh to myself as I say this, but the essence is true:
What boss wants a smart aleck competitive chick always trying to prove her smarts as a subordinate?
What subordinate wants to work for a boss who is always trying to prove her smarts by pointing out your errors?
What friend/spouse wants to live with someone who makes you feel intellectually inferior, by always having a better argument, solution…

As I have faced the dreaded question, are you giving advice to feel better about yourself, and I have reread my responses, and seen equal measures of wanting to help and wanting to show off my knowledge, I have gotten greater clarity on this frightened aspect of my personality that is constantly trying to get praise, recognition, acknowledgement, kudos, rewards, bonuses….

About my calling this a dreaded question: I remember the quote, what you resist, persists! I hate this question on the board with a passion. In case you missed it, I hate, hate, hate this question! I have all kinds of reasoning as to why this question is detrimental to the functioning of this community board, and some of it may even be right (more on that in a subsequent post, perhaps). But I have had to ask myself, why the emotional response? What is this triggering in me? And i have to admit that only this examination triggered by my resistance and emotional response has brought me to the above realization that my wanting to prove my smarts is an issue that girds so many of my problems in life.

Lastly, as I have written to advise Sundar, and also as a result of Luz sharing the video, I know that I am still hobbled by an inability to feel. As I mentioned to someone on the call yesterday, those of us who have been abused, or have seen abuse in childhood learn that the only way to survive is by killing off all feelings. I don’t feel. I am strong, I am stoic, I am powerful…. I can think my way out of any situation. I still feel little, and more superficially than say my afore-mentioned friend Sue. Now I can label emotions, but I still don’t feel anything in my chest or stomach, as so many of you can. I may cry in a movie, but I am hardly crying about the fact that ~23 million of my country men and women will lose their healthcare in the current health bill. I am sorry mentally, but my heart is not really touched.

But then that is why I am here in Life School – to learn to recapture the lost art of feeling!

So that’s my journey, and my realizations so far. Thanks for asking, Kristen.

Shelley

Dear Shelley,

I must add:

I like to wait and see whether there is any response from anyone referred to in my above post (from the past or from the present), a response that is from both heart and head, and not from just the head, in other words, a response based on both feeling and thinking, and not on just thinking alone, before I should consider any next step.

Oh, one other thing I just thought of: There is no point in hating this potential issue. That is of course the result of the frightened part showing its power over the thinking process. Everyone concerned is indeed our spiritual partners, as we are their spiritual partners.

The one quote of Gary’s that has meant so much to me always and seems to guide me in a vertical path in my life is: “We are all on the same boat.”

Yes, the way I understand it, the soul of each of ours has brought certain specific frightened parts and loving parts with the corresponding personality and the spiritual growth expected of us by the Divine Intelligence is nothing but identifying, challenging and changing each frightened part, and at the same time, identifying and cultivating each loving part (of course, so that the personality can give the gifts that the soul wants it to give to the world).

We all need to help one another. I honestly believe that should be the mission of the community board run by Gary and Linda in their wonderful Life School and Earth School.

Please, please don’t hate it. Just face it for what it is. That is all we can do. The rest is left to the alive, wise and compassionate Universe! It is the responsibility of the Universe to make sure everything ends well, which of course we never need to doubt.

With love (for everyone) and trust (in the Universe),
Sundar

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Sundar Naga.

Sundar,

Good luck with the procedure tomorrow.

All I can say to your earlier post is: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a lot of good in what Gary teaches, there is a lot of good advice on OUR community board. Glad you have voiced your concerns, let’s see if we can’t find solutions.

Later,

Shelley

Sundar I am sending good thoughts your way.

Love Doug

Glad to see you back, Sundar, and that everything went well. Rest well and take care of yourself.