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#06: Love relationships part II

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The Awareness and Consciousness Podcasts with Gary van Warmerdam
Awareness and Consciousness Podcast
#06: Love relationships part II
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Understanding Conflicting Desires

Our body has physical desires, our emotions have a desire to express love and our mind has a desire to have its beliefs and expectations met. This can create some internal conflict that gets more complicated when we add another person’s desires to the mix. The desires from the body and emotions are natural and intrinsic. The needs of the mind are artificial and often put limitations and unnecessary criteria on our emotions.

How do we deal with conflicts between what our mind says and what our emotions desire? Being aware and conscious of the desires of the body, the emotions and the mind create an opportunity to eliminate conflicts and make better choices.

People often make a list in their mind of what they want in a partner or a relationship in order to satisfy their desires. They have in their mind what the relationship should look like, how they are supposed to be and how their partner is supposed to be. This list is what the mind assumes will satisfy the emotional and physical wants. This list is usually filled with expectations and beliefs of what the mind wants. When this happens the mind becomes the master and the emotions become secondary. This is a recipe for conflict in relationships because the mind doesn’t usually have good information on satisfying our emotional needs.

When the emotions of love and respect are given priority and the mind becomes the servant we have an opportunity for harmony. By placing the emotional quality of the relationship as the priority we become aware of how we want to feel in our relationships. How we feel becomes more important than what it looks like. Our expectations and what it is supposed to look like become secondary. Our mind then becomes the servant to make agreements and manage expectations in order to honor the quality of love and respect. The way we communicate becomes more respectful of how we feel and how our partner feels. We address differences with the emotions of respect and kindness instead of with emotions of frustration and anger. We may still have disagreements to dissolve but we do it with a completely different approach.

When the agenda in the relationship is to meet the expectations and agreements in the mind it is with the hope and desire to satisfy our emotional and physical desires. We might as well recognize that the emotions are the priority and stop letting the mind place the expectations first.

You can listen to the previous episode: Love Relationships Part 1 here

#05: Love relationships part I

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The Awareness and Consciousness Podcasts with Gary van Warmerdam
Awareness and Consciousness Podcast
#05: Love relationships part I
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Understanding desire and yearning in relationships

Desires for a relationship come from deep within us. They aren’t desires for a specific person so much as a need for expression and experience of connection and feeling that we can have with another person. Those desires include the emotion of love, physical affection and sexual satisfaction. It is by satisfying our desires that we experience pleasure. An intimate partner is a fabulous way to satisfy these desires, but not the only way. The strength of these desires can be so strong when they are not met that they fee like yearning, or even painful aches. The mind often seeks out relationship interactions to relieve us of these aches.

In a conscious aware relationship it is not just important to be present with our emotions and our desires. We also need to manage the stories, expectations, and illusions in the mind that can create so much misunderstanding. In this audio I outline some of the desires we have for relationships, and how the mind is programmed to create answers about satisfying those desires. Of course the mind’s solution may not be the best one possible. It can only choose the best one it sees within its limited paradigm of experience and beliefs. This can lead to some unhappy and painful experiences in our relationships.

Understanding relationships includes awareness of our physical and emotional desires, as well as the mental constructs and expectations our mind creates. Our mind often interprets that a partner, soul mate, or some special match will be the answer to our needs. This is an exaggerated responsibility to place on our partner for our happiness and leads to emotional drama and reactions.

Our yearning is satisfied by the expression of our love, not by receiving it from someone else. It is the mind that makes assumptions about how our deep feelings will be satisfied and those assumptions, learned from an emotionally dramatic society, are usually wrong. In a truly conscious and aware relationship you will have to manage the beliefs and expectations in the mind to enjoy happiness all the time.

You can listen to the second part of Love Relationships here

#04: Happiness as choice

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The Awareness and Consciousness Podcasts with Gary van Warmerdam
Awareness and Consciousness Podcast
#04: Happiness as choice
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Most people spend their whole lives looking for some measure of happiness. Why is it so elusive?  What creates happiness? People will tell you that material things or other people won’t make you happy. Experts will advise you that in order to be happy you first have to make yourself happy. What they usually can’t explain is how to make your self happy. What I try to uncover in my work and in this audio is some of the mystery that surrounds an individual’s happiness.

Happiness is simply an emotional state. It is created by expressing emotions based in love.  If you express love, gratitude, and joy, you feel happy. If you create and express the emotions of fear, anger, or sadness, then you will experience fear, anger and sadness. There are no hidden secrets to be revealed in order to live a joyful life. Express love and you are on your way.

You are the creator of your emotions, and then you feel the emotions you create. We aren’t used to looking at our emotions with this sense of responsibility so it might seem a bit foreign. It was a long time before I understood things this simply. What can make it difficult to grasp is that we are used to having an intermediate step to our emotions.

Some of the required criteria the mind sets up might look like: “I will be so happy to lose 10 lbs”, “It will be so nice to get away for the weekend”. Through years of patterning we set ourselves up to express love only when certain criteria are met. When this criteria isn’t met we deny ourselves the joy of expressing love and remain unhappy instead.

We often don’t notice the mental criteria we use to determine the expression of our emotions. Because we overlook these mental factors, it appears that the source of our happiness is external. More about this in my article on the Pursuit of Happiness.

When you gain mastery over your mental criteria you can choose when to express love without needing the world meet your mental construct. Your mind can create some pretty complex criteria before allowing you to express love.  And that can be a big roadblock to living in a state of joy.

Why is happiness so elusive?  How we feel emotionally is determined by what we express and that can change moment to moment. Our expression can change as fast as our mind changes a thought. We can have a reaction to image in our imagination. That emotional reaction is our expression that we then feel. When our imagination goes uncontrolled our expressions are uncontrolled. Without the ability to direct our mind and imagination, our ability to maintain happiness is elusive.

When you develop mastery over your thoughts, beliefs, and imagination you will have mastery over your expression.  In this way, happiness is no longer something you pursue.  Happiness is something that you exude and share.

#03: Emotional reactions

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The Awareness and Consciousness Podcasts with Gary van Warmerdam
Awareness and Consciousness Podcast
#03: Emotional reactions
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When it comes to stopping or changing emotional reactions people often approach the problem like they are fixing a car. They ask, “How can I change this reaction?” or “How can I stop my jealousy, anger, frustration etc?”. The assumption seems to be that if we change one thing the whole problem will go away. People are looking for a fix as if it were like changing a spark plug. In my experience this approach and attitude to change emotional reaction does more harm than good.

Our desire to be free of emotional suffering and pain is real and authentic.  However, when we express our desire for change with an attitude laced with judgment, rejection, disdain, or frustration, it now becomes another emotional reaction. We are now having emotional reactions about our emotional reactions.

To change emotional reactions we would be better served to think of our mind and emotions as a garden. It is a living growing field of emotional energy that we plant seeds in, water, nurture, and bring to life. We want to nurture the fruit that bears emotions of joy and gratitude and we want to pluck out the weeds of fear and anger. Every expression we make goes into that emotional field. When you express judgments about emotional reactions you are planting and watering another weed in your mind.

We can’t get rid of the weeds by throwing weeds of judgment at them. We are going to need a different approach in order to be effective.

Some people choose denial as a way to stop their emotional reactions. I personally did emotional denial for a long time. Growing up as a male in this society, I was unknowingly encouraged. Fortunately I was so good at denying my emotions that I never felt guilty about it. Think of this as spraying weed killer on the whole garden. You kill the weeds, but you also kill the fruit. You don’t feel much anger and pain, but you don’t feel any love, joy or happiness either.  Numb is the word.

Behaviors, perspectives, and beliefs that create happiness will take some time to grow strong roots. You don’t expect trees to bear fruit in one week or one month. You invest some effort and action in the beginning so that you can feed your self emotionally thereafter. This is a garden approach that bears fruit.

You can fix a car in a hurry, but you have to grow an emotional field of joy and happiness with attention and patience.

At the same time there needs to be a continual weeding out of the beliefs and assumptions that create emotional reactions. Keep an eye out for the interpretations in the mind that create reactions. The seeds behind these emotionally harmful beliefs are archetype attitudes of the victim and the inner judge. When we eliminate the seeds of the judge and victim point of view all our energy goes directly to the roots of love, gratitude, and happiness.

Each person has their own personal field of emotional energy that they have grown. I am not saying this as a metaphorical statement. It is a literal statement. I’ll say it again. Each person has grown their own personal field of emotional energy. When we have an emotional reaction, that field gets agitated and we perceive its intensity. In the book The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz refers to this field as a parasite that steals our energy. Ekhart Tolle refers to this field as the Pain Body. Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. We don’t see emotions, but they can be powerful factors affecting our choices in life.

Even if you don’t believe each person has an emotional field, it may help to think of issues using this model. It will cause you to change the kind of question you ask. It won’t be about fixing something that is wrong. The questions will shift to, “How do I create and grow love and happiness in this situation?”. When you ask a different question your mind opens to different possibilities. It is also helpful to understand that you can completely transform this emotional field.

One of the reasons that stopping emotional reactions is challenging is that we haven’t been introduced to ways to deal with our own emotional field. It doesn’t respond the way we might think. We might be attacking it like a car when it behaves more like a garden. With the wrong approach our efforts to change emotions only agitate them further. When you become more aware of how your emotional field operates, practice what to do, and what not to do, you can completely change your emotional reactions.

In this episode I discuss how this emotional field behaves, both with an individual, and in relationships. Most importantly I cover what not to do, and why, when trying to change emotional reactions. When you stop doing the things that agitate your emotional field, your emotional reactions dissolve all by themselves. Learning to shift certain expressions is like not watering the weeds in the garden anymore. When you don’t water weeds anymore they die.

Topics covered in this audio are

  • Field of emotional energy and how it reacts
  • The Four Agreements: Impeccability
  • Judgment and rejection
  • Changing or fixing emotional reactions
  • What not to do
  • How the emotional field creates emotional reactions in relationships
  • Being the witness observer and why it is so important
  • Happiness
  • Archetypes of victim, judge, and hero

Understand more about how the Self Mastery Course sessions guide you to change emotional reactions located on my website.

#02: The Four Agreements and hidden assumptions

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The Awareness and Consciousness Podcasts with Gary van Warmerdam
Awareness and Consciousness Podcast
#02: The Four Agreements and hidden assumptions
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What are your beliefs and values?

Of don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements most people will say that the hardest one to keep is Don’t Take Anything Personally. I don’t agree.

The most challenging agreement is actually Being Impeccable with Your Word. In taking something personal you take what someone said and express an interpretation that makes it personal. We invest our faith in the belief that what someone says about us is accurate. Your interpretation is the expression of your own word and it is a distortion of the truth. Expressing your faith in your false interpretation is off the mark of impeccability. Our interpretation also often has a component from the inner judge and victim voices’ in our head.

Basically, if you are taking something personally you are not being impeccable as well. It also means we are making false assumptions about our self image. It appears that not taking things personally is the agreement we most often break because it is the one we notice because of the emotions. We don’t usually have emotional reactions when we make assumptions, but we set ourselves up for them.

The interpretation we make has the assumption that what someone says really applies to us.  We don’t usually see this assumption because we are often busy in an emotional reaction by then. The assumption might seem to be hidden but it is not.  It is out there plain as day but we aren’t use to noticing them. In the same way we aren’t use to noticing the windshield of our car as we drive. We train ourselves not to notice by looking right past what is filtering our vision.

How often do we make false assumptions even with our different beliefs and values?

If you are taking something personally you can be sure that you have some false assumptions in your perception and interpretation.

How do you stop making assumptions that are the set up to emotional reactions? The first step is always awareness. You can’t change a behavior pattern until you realize and accept responsibility for doing it. That includes patterns in the mind.

In this episode, I cover some places that assumptions hide. I do a little poking around to show you what they look like. I also show how they lead us down dark alleys chasing illusions in our minds. Becoming aware of those dark alleys of mental illusions will make it easier to get out.

Some of the beliefs and values stories I cover in this episode are:

  • What kind of parent am I?
  • Am I a bad mother?
  • Am I a good dad?
  • Ever wonder if you are a good lover?
  • What is my life purpose?
  • Do you want to know what God knows?
  • Do you want to be like God?

#01: Feeling not good enough – beliefs

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The Awareness and Consciousness Podcasts with Gary van Warmerdam
Awareness and Consciousness Podcast
#01: Feeling not good enough - beliefs
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A big component of feeling insecure is the image of perfection that we create in our mind. When the voice in our head compares us to that image of perfection it concludes that we are not good enough. Buying into this comparison with an imagined self is what creates the feeling of not being good enough.

It’s kind of silly to determine that we are not good enough based on an imaginary image in our mind but that is what we do with our beliefs. I battled this myself. When I unraveled the core beliefs structure behind the not good enough agreements a whole world of duality was exposed. When it was exposed to common sense awareness it fell apart because it was made of non-sense.

The feeling of not being good enough is created because we believe in stories and images in our mind that are not true. If I can change it, then you can change it too.