I have noticed how I can be critical. I can be sharp. I don’t mean to be, but I can have an edge. This occurs when my personal thinking is stirred up. I am feeling separate. My “I” is strong. Then other times when my thinking is more settled my “I” softens and my heart opens. I feel connected and more peaceful.
I am struck by the benefit of the understanding of the principles for pointing out how I can be more neutral about not just being the soft “I” with the expanded heart. I put less pressure on myself and don’t make one stance right and the other stance wrong. There is simply the opportunity to know where I am on my psychological map as Linda Pransky recently shared in the webinar she did for the Soul-Centered Series. This knowing is all that is needed. I naturally course-correct from there.
When I know I am taking things personally, being critical, or reactive, I automatically have more distance from my thinking. I am better able to navigate my humanness. There is something so refreshing about not needing to change my psychological map or having to block off territories and label them as scary no-go zones. Understanding there is no place on the map that is not me living in my thinking makes the whole map feel safe.
The content of my thinking might be different, but it is all coming from the sample place. I might enjoy the waterfalls of happiness more than the watering holes of despair, but the territory is all created the same way. I am always experiencing thought in the moment, and the principle of thought is pure potential. Even if I don’t like the content of what I am experiencing, it is coming from the same formless energy that my best experiences come from. Seeing this helps to me to be less reactive to my difficult feelings and less judgmental of myself when I am not my best.
I noticed that I have been irritable with my husband Angus lately. One of the difficulties we run into is that we can have different understandings of agreements we make with each other. I thought he agreed to do something by a certain time. He knew he agreed to it, but didn’t really think about the timeline. I feel let down and disappointed, and I criticized him. I blamed him for things not getting done. He felt hurt and didn’t think I was being fair. In the past, this would have led to the dance of death.
We used to do this dance often. I would feel constantly disappointed with Angus. It never occurred to me that my disappointment was not a result of him not keeping an agreement. I didn’t see disappointment as thought — my perspective. I saw it as fact and his fault. I didn’t recognize that he and I view agreements differently. I see them as written in stone and having to be kept them no matter what. He sees them more as a vague yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’ll get to it when I can. He also has a tendency to say yes before thinking things through. When this happened and things wouldn’t pan out, I would feel devastated. I took it personally. I believed in meant I couldn’t trust him. This was ridiculous because Angus is one of the most trustworthy people I know when it comes to what is important.
In my arrogance, I thought my way was the right way and focused on trying to change Angus to be more like me. But when I did this, Angus would just not make any agreements. He didn’t want to disappoint me so the best way forward was to not agree to anything. This didn’t feel good either.
Where I found my peace was in accepting how Angus sees the world and how he navigates it is not wrong or bad. It works for him. Since I love him and want to be with him, I had to find a way to accept his reality as valid and a way to work with him within our separate realities. When I stopped judging his way as wrong, it opened me up to ways of being with him that didn’t include me controlling him or changing him. I found that we were more often than I realized completely on the same page, but just had different ways of getting there.
I do still get caught up in my feelings of dismay at times when things don’t turn out as I think they should, like this recent time, but I am also grateful to be reminded by Angus that the world does not actually end when this happens. I am better able to see that my rigidity is not a strength. It actually makes me more vulnerable to mental and emotional destabilization. It may look like it helps me to get sh*t done, but who I am while I’m getting it done is not who I want to be. A more laid back and flexible approach to life is something that I now respect a great deal more than I used to, and I can thank Angus for modeling this to me.
Knowing where I am on my psychological map does help me to spend less time in crazy town and more time enjoying the island of love. And all of the map is fueled by the same source so I can’t really go wrong. When I find myself feeling trapped in my psychological geography, I can remember to look in the direction of where my experience is coming from. This reminds me of the infinite possibility behind my experience and how quickly my thinking changes to create a new experience. Understanding this allows me to be more comfortable hanging out in my difficult feelings and to take my experience less seriously. It also has me feel more compassion for myself when I am in the dark parts of my map.
Rohini Ross is excited to present The Soul-Centered Series in Santa Monica starting October 2018. She is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a transformative coach and trainer, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, www.rohiniross.com.