Throughout life, we encounter relationship challenges. Perhaps we feel hurt by someone. When these moments arise, we may indeed feel a wound from the experience that unfortunately can continue long after the hurtful event has occurred. If that has happened, you may continue to feel the wound as long as you relate to the person as an “enemy” or you continue to remember the hurtful situation. Unfortunately, if you get caught in a psychological complex, you may even wear the hurt like a negative “badge of honor”!
Worse yet, if you keep the person in that role of enemy, even if you are not doing it consciously, you may continue to play out the role of victim and hold the other person to be perpetrator. The only way to change the relationship is to change the way you think about and relate to this person. How?
Ask yourself: Is it possible for me to remember a time when this person was kind or showed love and compassion toward me or even toward someone else? One client told me that she simply thinks of the person as having been at some point a small, vulnerable child, and this allows her to have more compassion for the person.
If you can focus your thoughts on the person from a positive view, you may be able to find some goodness within him or her. Your kinder thoughts do not change that the past happened, but your new outlook can free you of the negative connection that you might be holding. By investing in more positive thoughts, you will gain more positive “dividends.”
Keep in mind above all that no one is perfect—-not you—-nor this person. Remember that no one is all good or all bad.
If you are able to send out positive energy to this person—-whether in their presence or from a distance—-you can allow them to meet healthier expectations that you hold about them. As you free yourself from negative feelings, you will raise your vibration as well as your expectations. You will also free the other person as well as yourself from negative bondage.
You will manifest what you expect, including how you hold other people to be.
So expect good people and good things to come to you!
People often ask me how they can become a (fill in blank—teacher, healer, coach, artist, etc.), something they’ve perhaps always desired.
Whatever it is you desire to do, begin doing it now. Don’t keep thinking about HOW to make it happen logically. Your focused energy will propel it.
In fact, LOGIC is DEATH to the miracle maker in you! So it’s best to stop trying to make it happen through logic.
So, for example, if you want to teach,
Look into every way in which you can teach now officially or unofficially (lend a hand, explain how someone can improve a process, etc.)
Then RESEARCH all the options that are out there for teaching as a career—how to become a certified teacher (e.g., Teacher Switcher program at ODU), but also ways to volunteer your time to teach and help.
What I have found is that if you HOLD YOUR INTENTION CLEARLY and remain true to your desire, the Universe will assist you in manifesting your intent.
Create a focused mission statement and repeat it. For 10 years, I repeated the mantra: “I desire to teach and help others internationally.”
I never once thought that this would be NOT be possible, although I didn’t understand HOW it could happen. I didn’t get caught up in the logic of it–the “how’s.”
About seven years ago, I was asked out-of-the-blue to assist a person in going to Japan and giving a lecture on healing (my work in U.S.). I paid money to go to Japan, lost income while there the first time, but KNEW I needed to do this because it FELT right.
I knew in my heart this was an opportunity that matched my intention, so I TRUSTED.
I will be going to Japan again in November to teach, counsel, and perform healing sessions—over 13 visits later!
The bottom line is that you have to BELIEVE.
Higher Powers will assist you if you hold a noble intention. If you make that intention involve HELPING OTHERS, the Universe will become your loving partner. Of that I am clear.” –Cynthia Bischoff
NOTE: This picture was taken a few years ago on a visit to Japan. Yes, there I am in my kimono with a beautiful garden behind me. I was fortunate to participate in a tea ceremony. I am so grateful to my Japanese friends!
I believe that a higher order of intelligence and understanding originates in the heart. Researchers such as Dean Ornish, M.D., and Doc Lew Childre, M.D., and others have proven that the heart has a unique intelligence and that this intelligence is of a higher consciousness.
Reverence is the basic energy of the heart and the soul. I am in awe of this energy. Reverence of nature, of others, of life itself brings forth patience in us. Most of all, as we listen to the intelligence of our hearts, we can practice what is referred to by Gary Zukav, author of Seat of the Soul, as “non-judgmental” justice. Our higher consciousness knows that not any one of us can be self-appointed to judge another because we do not know the entirety of all experience. I am, by the way, not referring to human law and the need to keep a person from abusing another. I am referring to those moments when we judge another’s life or behavior because it does not conform to our view.
When we realize that everything is being seen from a sacred view by a Higher Power, we can know that we don’t have to judge or “play God.” Instead, we can discern what is right for us in our own lives, and we can bring forth compassion and understanding for others.
In fact, if we are met with a negative energy in another person, instead of criticizing or responding in kind, we can choose to respond with a higher vibrational response. We can choose not to engage in the negativity and instead to respond from within ourselves from our own heart’s light. Evil or negativity cannot be healed with evil or negativity in response to it. The appropriate response is to eliminate evil within ourselves and to respond with love.
It is possible to have displays of anger, but to know that there are two kinds of anger: anger with a closed heart and anger with an open heart. With an open heart, I am able to respond with firmness and proper boundaries, yet still remain faithful to love and compassion. The highest response is always love.
We all have a shadow self. When I first heard this idea it truly fascinated me. What is the shadow self? Is it a negative part of us?
As I began delving into the concept, I found that Dr. Carl Jung, a famous psychiatrist, spoke of the shadow as “. . .the other in us, the other that embarrasses or shames us, . . .the negative side of the personality, those unpleasant qualities we like to hide. . . .”
I realized that often we disown or “cut off” our shadow self. We make statements like “I’m not angry,” “I don’t feel sad,” and so on as a way of denying a part of ourselves. We may have been conditioned not to allow ourselves to feel this shadow piece, perhaps in order to stay in control. I realized with further research and understanding that our shadow might also be a very positive side of ourselves that we have kept unexpressed. In other words, our shadow could be a strength of ours that we have kept hidden because of being fearful of expressing it. For example, a person might think: “If I express my strength others will not help me,” and so on.
Oftentimes at various junctures on our journey and particularly during periods in which we are growing and expanding who we are, we meet our shadow more fully. We may get in touch with those repressed parts of ourselves that we can no longer deny. So we encounter situations and challenges in which we are given an opportunity to become conscious of something inside of us as a way of having an opportunity to become more aware of who we really are.
It’s common to meet our shadow self when our deeper needs and values tend to change direction. Greeting the shadow self may even call for breaking old habits and cultivating unrecognized talents. And it’s important not to avoid these “meetings,” since we may remain unaware of what embracing our shadow self has to teach us. Avoidance may make us feel safer, yet the safety can become a kind of living death.
Everything with depth casts a shadow. The shadow is the quality that makes us human. As much as we might wish to reject it in order to try to be “perfect,” it is the shadow that gives us our humanity. Embracing the shadow, moving through our lives with awareness and grace, is what creates our healing or wholeness.
Throughout life, we encounter relationship challenges. Perhaps we feel hurt by someone. When these moments arise, we may indeed feel a wound from the experience that unfortunately can continue long after the hurtful event has occurred. If that has happened, you may continue to feel the wound as long as you relate to the person as an “enemy” or you continue to remember the hurtful situation. Unfortunately, if you get caught in a psychological complex, you may even wear the hurt like a negative “badge of honor”!