Soul Connections - July 2013


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MESSAGE FROM GARY - UNWORTHINESS
ORIGIN MAGAZINE INTERVIEW WITH GARY
GARY AND OPRAH - SUPER SOUL SUNDAY
JOURNEY TO THE SOUL - SOLD OUT
NOTE FROM LINDA - INFERIORITY IS A CHOICE
Awakening to Spiritual Partnership
Dear Spiritual Partner,

In the days when we were limited in our perception to the data that our five senses provide, emotions were seen as something like an appendix - useless, sometimes painful, and best removed if it becomes too inflamed.  Those days are gone.  Now that we are becoming multisensory - able to sense ourselves as souls as well as bodies, our lives as meaningful and purposeful, and the Universe as alive, wise, and compassionate - we are able to see the role of our emotions in our evolution.  They are messages from our souls that bring us information that is very important.  They tell us when fear is active in us and when love is active.  This enables us to create positive and wholesome experiences (by acting with love) instead of negative and destructive experiences (by acting with fear).  In other words, awareness of our emotions allows us to create the futures we long for - futures of harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life instead of discord, competition, hoarding, and exploitation.

Unworthiness is a debilitating, chronic (to say the least), and extremely painful emotion.  It also leads directly to the root of all debilitating, chronic, and excruciating emotional experiences - the pain of powerlessness.  Every destructive, violent (to yourself or others) emotion, is an expression of powerlessness, and each is very painful.  Anger is painful.  Jealousy is painful.  So is vindictiveness, inferiority, and even superiority.  Beneath every obsessive thought, compulsive activity, and addictive behavior lies the pain of powerlessness.  You will always find it there when you have the courage to look for it.

We can no longer evolve without the skill and courage to experience all of our emotions completely and to act on the most constructive of them no matter what is happening inside of us or what is happening outside of us.  The spiritual path is a conscious and courageous path of emotional awareness and responsible choice.  Our evolution now requires that we walk it.

Love,  

   


MESSAGE FROM GARY
 
UNWORTHINESS 
    
What is unworthiness?  Of course, it is the Unworthinessawareness of a part of your personality that says to itself, "I am unworthy," for example, I am unworthy of the love that I have in my life, or the wealth that I have, and more commonly, I am unworthy of the happiness that I feel.  Thoughts such as "It's too good to be true, and "This can't last forever because it is too good" are experiences of unworthiness.  You feel unworthy of what the Universe has given you, that you do not deserve it, that the other shoe will fall, and it is only a matter of time before you will get what you really deserve, which will be painful. 

Unworthiness is all these things and more.  It is the inmost frightening thought that you do not belong, no matter how much you want to belong.  That you are an outsider and will always be an outsider.  It is the idea that you are flawed and cannot be fixed.  It is wanting to be loved and feeling unlovable, or wanting to love and feeling that you are not capable of loving.  It is the feeling that no matter what you do, it is not enough, that you are incurably inadequate, intrinsically and permanently flawed.  It is the fear of people seeing you as you really are, the belief that if they did, they would not want anything to do with you. All this is the experience of unworthiness, and beneath all of this is the experience of powerlessness - of feeling powerless to be a real part of Life, to love, to be loved, to affect the world, to be heard, to be worth hearing or to have something worthy saying. It is self-loathing, self-hatred, and no matter how difficult this idea is to even consider, it will not leave you somewhere deep inside, and it is excruciating.  It is the most painful experience in the Earth school, and everyone shares it.  This is the pain of powerlessness.

The pain of powerlessness has fueled our evolution.  It has caused us to reach outward continually, relentlessly, to change the world around us.  Pursuing external power - the ability to manipulate and control - has been our way of avoiding the pain of powerlessness.  Anything that we do to make ourselves feel worthy and safe is a flight from the pain of powerlessness.  Every pursuit of external power - every attempt to change the world or a person in order to make yourself feel valuable and safe - is a distraction from the pain of powerlessness.  All the distractions in the world cannot uproot the pain of powerlessness inside you.

Our history is a chronicle of the ways that we have attempted to escape from the pain of powerlessness, or said the other way, the ways that we have pursued external power.  Tribes fight tribes, siblings fight siblings, nations invade nations, individuals strive to become stronger than one another, or more seductive, educated, wealthy, or famous.  The list is as long as it is familiar.  The pursuit of external power surrounds us everywhere.  We are continually attempting to mask the pain of powerlessness from ourselves, and others are continually doing the same.  Driving every avaricious banker, sexual predator, workaholic, perfectionist, and all attempts to exploit anything or anyone is fear of the pain of powerlessness and the need to escape it.

Now that our perception is expanding beyond the five senses, we are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world.  This is our new emerging common perception:  to dismantle the control of the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority - we need to look inward, not outward.  We need to change ourselves instead of the world in order to liberate ourselves once and for always from the tormenting experiences of unworthiness.

Spiritual partners help one another recognize when a frightened part of the personality is active - when they are striving to mask the pain of powerlessness, for example, by becoming angry, jealous, or a victim.  When you are not aware that a frightened part of your personality is active, you forget that all is perfect.  You forget to relax and enjoy yourself.  You become serious, concerned, and overwhelmed.  If you were able to laugh with your spiritual partners, to say "I am doing it again.   A part of my personality is again feeling like the most unworthy person in the Universe," then you could all laugh at this.

The pain of powerlessness is now fueling our evolution in a very different way.  Instead of reaching outward to change the world in order to avoid it, we now look inward to experience it, to change ourselves, to create authentic power, and we act on the healthiest parts our personality that we can access in the moment.  For example, we choose to act with patience when we are angry, or to act with appreciation when we are judging.

This is a very big change.  It is a change in the way that humanity is evolving.  Our evolution now requires us to experience consciously all the painful impulses that have created all the painful consequences in our lives when we acted on them and then choose consciously to act instead from the healthiest, most wholesome parts of our personalities that we can access in the moment.  Each time we do this, we create authentic power.  When we create authentic power again and again, we become authentically powerful.  Each experience of unworthiness reminds us that now is the time to create authentic power. 
 

Will you share your comments with me on http://seatofthesoul.com/blog-new/?     

  

Love,  

 

Gary 

Gary Zukav - Interview in this month's ORIGIN Magazine    

   ORIGIN Magazine

Check out this month's issue of ORIGIN magazine featuring Gary!

Click here to find a store near you that carries ORIGIN (it's available at most Whole Foods.):

Click here to purchase the online edition of the July/August 2013 issue:

http://www.originmagazine.com/online-issues/

Don't miss this article!

 

GARY and OPRAH on SUPER SOUL SUNDAY    

July 14 at 11am ET
/PT and again July 21 at 10am ET/PT
 
OWN is encoring Oprah & Gary: The Essence of "The Seat of the Soul" on Super Soul Sunday in the main slot on Sunday July 14 at 11 am ET/PT.  This special show, taped "Under the Oaks" at Oprah's home, will rerun on July 21 at 10:00 am ET/PT.   Don't miss this collector's episode of these two dear colleagues exploring life's most meaningful questions.
 

JOURNEY TO THE SOUL 2013   

Sold Out
 JULY 21-25, 2013  AT MT. HOOD 
(NEAR PORTLAND, OREGON)

 

Transform yourself!  Develop emotional awareness.  Learn to make the best choices you can make.  Consult your intuition.  Step into new dimensions of awareness and relationshipSing your song!  Meaning and richness are waiting for you.  Come to meet them.  Experiment in the company of like-hearted individuals.  Align yourself with the new evolutionary path. Learn how to give the gifts you were born to give and start giving them.  

 

NOTE FROM LINDA

INFERIORITY IS A CHOICE

   Linda Francis 

I was aware that I felt inferior from a young age. I knew that I was inherently inferior and unworthy. My Mom felt this way, also, it seemed to me. It was a comfortable and safe place for me. I was very identified with and attached to my feeling of unworthiness. In fact, it felt much better to me to feel and act inferior than to act superior.

It was only after I read The Seat of the Soul in 1989 that I deeply understood that my feelings of inferiority came from fear inside of me. Before that, I felt that was just the way I was, and it could not be changed. Then, I realized that I actually felt superior to people whom I thought were acting superior, and these experiences also came from fear-based parts of my personality! When I initially discovered these things about myself, it was very painful.

Then, I had the biggest realization: if my experiences of inferiority and superiority were coming from parts of my personality and not from who I really was, I didn't need to habitually act on their behalf!  I became so excited to know that every time these parts of my personality became active, I could choose to act from parts of my personality that are based in love instead.  This was an amazing discovery, but it did not change my life.  What changed my life, and continues to change it even as I write you, is my commitment.  It is my commitment to using my will to not act from the parts of me that still believe that I am inferior/superior and that the Universe doesn't really love me.   These thoughts come from parts of my personality that are based in fear, too.  If I don't challenge these parts, they continue to act through me in fear and doubt, and that becomes the energy I contribute to myself and the world.

My daily practice and deepest intention is to become aware of these fear-based parts of myself when they are active in me and to choose to act from the healthiest parts of my personality that I can in that moment.  In fact, as I am writing you I am challenging that part of me that feels inferior yet again.  It came up this morning before I sat down to write. Instead of letting it have its way, I am challenging it by writing these thoughts from the clearest place in me that I can in order to share with you what is most important to me.
 

Love,

 Linda

 

  

Until Next Time....

 

"The experience of unworthiness without the perspective that allows it to be used as an
instrument of spiritual growth is the same as drifting on an ocean of pain in a vessel
that is seaworthy and not taking the time to learn how to sail it."

 

-- Gary Zukav and Linda Francis, The Heart of the Soul:Emotional Awareness 

        
   
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