The Happily Ever After that Never Was…
I spend the equivalent of half an hour a day looking at pretty websites and luxury images because it makes me feel good. It has become a form of entertainment for me, and chosen break from the deep explorations I am immersed in the rest of my life. You see, what I sell isn’t pretty, but it is real.
But just what does it take to appreciate the beauty of the real?
In short, it takes a willingness to delve deeply into the definitely-not-pretty-in-fact-quite-ugly aspects of truth that live in your body. Let’s explore this deeper, shall we?
Where you choose to stand in the cause & effect equation determines the quality of your life.
In the cause and effect equation, women are taught to make choices, often reactive and habituated, that keep them firmly on the effect side. On the effect side of the equation, life looks like:
Perpetual victimization, powerlessness, and manipulation of self and other.
Pain of body and mind.
A deep longing for belonging that simply isn’t.
Numbing, distracting, convincing, and trying.
Constantly falling short and feeling inadequate.
Suffering …
If that’s you, I invite you to consider that that is NOT who you are. In fact, it is your cultural conditioning, aka your programming. Somewhere deep inside, you already know that. Then the stories emerge of “that’s just how it is”. As Bruce Lipton recently said at the latest TCCHE conference I attended— that’s BS: belief systems! Indeed.
How does cultural conditioning impact women?
As a broad stroke generalization, women worldwide are taught to remain compliant with the status quo of life in order to keep the peace. They are conditioned to take responsibility over all interpersonal relationships. Women are to never dare to think about what they want in their life and settle for going to school, marrying a “good man”, settling down and “live happily ever after”. If they follow the rules exactly, “good women” will be rewarded …some day in the distant future. But for now, they must wait … wait their turn, wait until someone hands them their just deserts, wait to be given permission… wait...
Wait to be given, but never – ever– take (after all, that is impolite and inconsiderate!).
In fact, the women who dare to take are, at best, labeled selfish and inconsiderate bitches, and at worst, shunned from participation in the system (be it family, community, church — all of it). That fear alone, of being excluded, terrifies eight billion people in compliance.
It works because it taps into our human psyche, where belonging is a primal need. Think about it — what lengths would you go to to feel loved? Secure? Wanted? Fear is isolation has immense consequences. This is why most women avoid developing capacity for response-ability … they are afraid of the consequences of standing out. So they spend a lifetime at the effect side of the equation, hoping and praying for someone to take them out of their misery.
Truth is: without intentionally taking ownership of the process of choosing for ourselves, we will remain trapped in a victim-mentality whose grip is deep, intergenerational and largely hidden from conscious awareness.
You see, taking ownership of the process of choice puts you squarely in the “cause” side of the equation.
There are a handful of women who intentionally push the pause button and explore how else they might choose to live their life, today. For them, life has become far too dreadful and they know, as a client of mine brilliantly said recently, “I don’t know how else to live but I am done living this way”. That’s exactly what it takes to awaken and to begin to follow the popcorn trail to your evolution …
We can see with children that they need to be constantly learning to evolve. We know what happens to children whose development is contained — they atrophy. Yet somehow we have bought the lie that we (our parents, our culture, our religion) know all there is to know and there is no room for the unknown in that. All we have to do is manage the pieces of the puzzle until they fit. We never consider that we do not have all the pieces …
So, in our search for wholeness, we read, we listen, we go to conferences, we get PhD’s, we intellectualize, we plead, we make lists, we journal, we talk, we complain, we fuss, we rage, we go to yoga, we breathe, we meditate, we smoke dope, we down ativan, we double down on control — we do everything to manage the discomfort in our body through the intellect. At the end of the day, it simply doesn’t work.
Why? Because pain lives in the body. We cannot run depleted on survival but try to make it look pretty all while operating from the same victimhood paradigm that we want to avoid. Truth is, wherever we go, our pain follows us…
So a question I have come to really love pondering is what are the consequences of that? You see, there are consequences to all of our choices — which consequences are you willing to live it? And the part that pisses everyone off (until it sets them free) is that it is a choice.
We have become familiar with our cultural conditioned comfort zone because it is, after, familiar. Everyone we know lives that way. Their lives are filled with pain, disease and discomfort. But at least it’s not their fault … so they strap in for a lifetime of misery trying to convince themselves that they are doing their best given their unfortunate circumstances. What strikes me is that it never occurs to most women (and I do mean most women) that the unfortunate circumstances they find themselves in are their own creation. Yikes, I know. Maybe that’s why I’m not so popular on TikTok…???!!!
You cannot soundbite, intellectualize or freebie your way out of this one, ladies.
But you can find a different process to live from.
Let’s agree that the quality of your life is categorically not be your fault (whose fault it is? good luck figuring that one out! How far back do you have to go?!). However, it most certainly is your responsibility. All you have to do is develop the capacity to expand your response-ability. For that, you have to be willing…
You have to be willing to be The One who dares to break free of the pervasive and invasive victim mindset that plagues us globally and intergenerationally. Not easy, that’s a fact. And it is possible.
From my experience, every nanosecond of my life and every dollar spent has been immensely worth it. I can’t say I am now “enlightened” (lol, as if!), and I can’t say that I never have my moments — on the contrary. The deeper you go, the deeper the pain, the deeper the desire to avoid it. That part never goes away; instead what happens is you discover a different platform to stand on and a different process to engage in the push-comes-to-shove moments of perceived insanity. That’s what the Decloaking audio files are all about, so check them out here.
You can only discover what it means to be at the cause side of the equation if you value Truth over illusion (aka secrets and lies, including gaslighting and manipulation and all the clever things we do to ourselves because we hope for a different outcome that we know isn’t).
Not everyone will support that journey … so how willing are you to focus the full measure of your attention on the quality of your life? What do you want?! Are you willing to claim it?
Here’s the truth: It’s hard work to intentionally choose to live from the cause side of the equation – it means you can never ever again play victim to your circumstances. It means you take ownership of the choices that created the life you’ve got, no matter whose ‘fault’ you think it is. It means that you stay in the tough conversations with yourself about yourself. It means you educate yourself to an alternative process to live from …
Here’s the epic, life-affirming news that so many are terrified of: the nanosecond you choose to stand in the cause side of the equation, the quality of your life transforms, by intention.
S0, what does it actually take to choose “at cause” for every single thing that you manifest while developing capacity for self-compassion in the process? (In other words, without ever blaming yourself? Important side-note: Ah, there’s another one – the paradigm of fault and blame. We are, as a culture, steeped in the shameless stink of the abusive cycle of fault and blame. As if by finding who’s at fault we will free ourselves. As if by assigning blame we will live better lives. That’s just not how it works, and we, as a collective, are not even close to waking up to discover how it actually works. But I digress…)
YOU, however, as the unique Being that you are, might be ready. You might have read all of the books and done all the courses and been to all the conferences and all the seminars and all the Ted Talks – but you still find yourself unable to make leaps. The good news is, it is possible, and you need a new process to engage. The journey to the rest of your life starts with this (go ahead, listen to the free CD to help you decide if this is for you). If you wanna talk about it, email me.
Final parting words? When transformation beckons, open the door and welcome it in … after all, the truth will set you free …
