Cheryl Crow says, “It’s the turnaround or pivotal moments that introduce you to yourself - these small or these huge catastrophic events in your life – that’s where you really meet yourself. “ If you are a student of consciousness you know that these precious moments in that gap, just seconds before you take that next step, make that next decision, or say those next words are profoundly potent and critical to your personal evolution. It is in that moment, in that gap that we find enlightenment. It is there that we conquer ourselves. It is there that we meet the shadow side of us that has learned to defend, justify, excuse and lie in order to survive. As adults, those parts don’t always serve our best interests.
What might we meet in the gap? Both sides of ourselves, hopefully without blame or shame, because we all have these sides and should be glad we do. They helped us to survive.
Here are some examples.
Shadow Side
Pretending innocence or goodness, staying
overly upset or unwillingness to forgive a perceived badness in others.
Jealousy, exclusivity, prejudice
Feeling unduly threatened or insecure
Emotionally or physically abusive
Manipulation or misuse of power
Passive aggressiveness, secrecy
Dishonesty, gossip, corruption
Covert behavior or nastiness, contempt
Selective memory, Truth distortions to make
self look victimized or one-up
Silence, withholds or compliance
Power trips, emotional control or blackmail
Vindictiveness or unwillingness to forgive
Poor, pitiful me
Expecting too much from others and resenting
it when you don’t get what you want.
Hatred, elitism
Self destructiveness – substance, self-abuse
Being Miserly, selfish
Grandiosity or ego
Enlightened Side
Working and acting from heart acceptance while establishing good boundaries that don’t enable others.
Inclusivity
Doing personal work to be balanced
Compassion and kindness
Empowering others, releasing control
Transparency and directness
Honesty, integrity in all things
Openness, direct communication
Ownership of personal responsibility
Direct communication and honesty
Clearing one’s own insecurities
Examining motives for refusal to forgive
Building own self-esteem
Manifesting what you need and want yourself
Open-hearted love
Dealing with addictions and self abuse
Trusting the Universe and giving freely
Seeing oneself as part of the whole
These contrasting options are always available to us, but many of us are still making decisions out of old habit energy or societal or family programming. We get to choose in every circumstance and in every decision, who we will actually become.
People ask, “How do we become enlightened?” It’s not in a book or in a movie. Neither is it something the guru on a mountain top can give you. The answer is sitting in the gap, in your next decision. Every time you make a decision that opts for healing, truth, love and unity, you have emotionally, physically and spiritually bumped the vibration of your energy up a notch. Your body, mind and spirit hold that enlightened energy, it becomes accumulative and little by little, step by step you become your best self, your enlightened self. It’s pretty powerful to know that you really are creating your own reality with every choice.
In 1982 when I first began teaching about energy and consciousness, my kids used to introduce me as, “That weird lady who teaches people to use something they can’t even see.” Today this paradigm or truth about how energy works is common knowledge. It’s on Oprah, in best selling books, and studied in great institutes and scientific labs. There is no longer any doubt. The consciousness community, the scientific community and now the world community all agree that every decision we make creates our reality. What will yours be?
Dr. Dina Bachelor Evan - Coaching
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