by Gregg Braden
When we have a fear in our lives, even if we aren’t consciously aware of precisely what it is, it creates an emotional bias in our bodies—an experience often described as a “charge” or a “hot button.” This shows up in our lives as the strong ideas we have as to something’s “rightness” or “wrongness,” or the way that a situation “should” play out. Our charges and hot buttons are the promise that we’ll create the relationships that show us which fear is asking to be healed. In other words, these charges will show us our fears—the greater one is, the deeper the fear. And they’re seldom wrong.
So, if you don’t consciously remember your fear of separation and abandonment, for example, there’s a good possibility that it will show up in your life in ways that you least expect and during the times that are the most inconvenient. In your romances, careers, and friendships, for instance, do you find that you’re the “leaver” or the “leavee”?
Are you the one who’s always the last to know that the relationship is over? Do perfectly “good” marriages, jobs, and friendships seem to crumble before your eyes without warning and for no apparent reason? And are you devastated when these relationships break and fail?
Or maybe you’re on the other side of this. Do you always leave your relationships, careers, and friendships while they’re still going strong just to avoid being hurt? Do you find yourself saying something such as: “This is the perfect_____ [fill in the blank]. I’d better quit now while things are good, before something happens and I get hurt.” If this kind of scenario has played out in your life or is doing so now, there’s a good possibility that it’s your masterfully created and socially acceptable way of masking your deepest fears of abandonment and separation.
By repeating these patterns in relationship after relationship, you may reduce the pain of your fear to a manageable level. It might even get you through your entire life. The trade-off, however, is that the suffering turns into a diversion. It becomes your way of looking away from the universal fear that you were separated from the wholeness of your Creator, abandoned and eventually forgotten. How can you ever find the love, trust, and closeness that you long for if you’re always leaving or being left behind just when you get close?
OUR SECOND UNLVERSAL FEAR:
LOW SELF-WORTH
Almost universally there is a feeling that runs through each person in every culture and society of our world that we are somehow just not good enough. We feel that we don’t deserve recognition for our contributions to our families, communities, and workplaces. We feel that we aren’t worthy of being honored and respected as human beings. Sometimes we even surprise ourselves with the feeling that we aren’t good enough to be alive.
While this sense of low self-worth may not always be conscious, it’s there continuously and provides the underlying foundation for the way we approach life and our relationships with other people. As masters of emotional survival, we often find ourselves playing out the real-life scenarios that equate to the imaginary values we place on ourselves.
For example, every one of us has dreams, hopes, and aspirations of accomplishing greater things in our lives, and more often than not we rationalize all the reasons why we’ll never have them. As we’ve seen in earlier chapters, emotion is a language unto itself, the very language that the Divine Matrix responds to. When we feel as though we can’t achieve our biggest dreams, the Matrix simply gives back to us what we’ve given it to work with: delays, challenges, and obstacles.
Although we may wish for greater things, the doubt that comes from deep within us ultimately comes from our feelings of low worth. We wonder, Am I good enough to have such joy in my life? And why would we expect to feel any differently? In the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, we’ve been told by those we trust and respect that we’re somehow “lesser” beings. We aren’t as good as the angels of the heavens or the saints that we learn from. This same tradition has convinced many people that just by being in this world, we need to be redeemed from life itself for reasons that we’re told are beyond our understanding.
Through the 2,000-year-old story of Jesus, we’re compared to the edited, condensed, and preferred memory of a man’s life that we can never live up to. Sometimes the comparisons are serious admonitions, suggesting that we may be condemned to a very tough afterlife if we don’t live a certain way. Sometimes they’re a little lighter, simply reminding us of our inadequacy by asking sarcastic questions such as: “Who do you think you are—Jesus Christ?” or “How are you going to get there … walk on water?” How many times have you heard these or similar remarks, implying that even though you may try your best to live a good life, you’ll never be as good or worthy as a master of the past? Although we seldom take such comments seriously, on a deep level they still remind us that we’re somehow undeserving of life’s greatest joys.
Even if you have high self-esteem, to some degree you may believe these suggestions. Ultimately, on some level, we all probably do. As a result, we express our beliefs through our expectations of our achievements, how much joy we allow ourselves, and the success of our relationships. Our fear of not being valuable enough to have love, acceptance, health, and longevity promises that every one of our relationships will reflect the fear of low worth. And it happens in ways that we would never expect in a million years.
For example, how many times have you settled for relationships that aren’t what you really want but rationalized them by saying things such as: “This is good enough for now” or “This is a steppingstone to something better”? Have you ever found yourself saying, “I’d love to share my life with a loving, compassionate, nurturing, and caring partner, but …” or “This isn’t the job where I can really express my gifts and talents, but …” followed by all the reasons why your greatest dreams can’t be realized in this moment?
If these or similar scenarios have played out in your life, there’s a good chance that they are the skillfully created masks that you use to question your worth. Through your personal and business relationships, you remind yourself of your core beliefs about yourself, beliefs that ask for a greater healing.
OUR THLRD UNLVERSAL FEAR:
SURRENDER AND TRUST
Have you ever experienced a relationship of any kind where your level of trust was so complete that you were able to surrender your individual self in exchange for knowing a greater one? To be clear here, I’m not suggesting that you give yourself and all of your personal power away in any situation. On the contrary, the experience that I’m asking about is one where you have such a strong sense of who you are that you allow yourself to let go of your beliefs about what or who you should be in exchange for a greater possibility of what you may become.
Almost universally there’s a feeling within each of us that it’s not safe to do so—it isn’t safe to trust other people, the wisdom of our bodies, or the peace of our world. And why should we think any differently? We need look no further than the evening news to give ourselves plenty of reasons to justify our feelings. Every day we’re shown examples of behavior that seem to justify, and even perpetuate, the sense that we live in a frightening and dangerous world. From the terror, murder, and assaults that we see in the world at large to the violations of trust and betrayals that we experience in our personal lives and the myriad health concerns we’re cautioned to watch for each day, this planet we call “home” certainly can look like a really scary place.
Ultimately, our sense of safety in the world must come from the security that we feel inside ourselves. To experience this, we must trust—we need to ask ourselves if we have faith in the intelligence of the universe that’s inherent in all situations and all life. If our answer to this question is no, then we must ask ourselves Why? Who or what experience taught us that our world isn’t safe and it’s not okay to trust?
Do you believe in the process of life, for example? When you find that the universe has thrown an unexpected curveball at you, a loved one, or a pet, do you immediately go to a place of blame so tha
t you can feel protected? When your children walk out the door to go to school in the morning, do you worry that something might happen and they won’t be safe, or do you know that they’re secure until you feel the joy of welcoming them home when the bus drops them off at 3:30 in the afternoon?
Although all of the frightening things that we see happening around us are certainly part of a reality, the key to overriding our fears is that they don’t necessarily need be part of our reality. While this may seem like a naive New Age philosophy, it’s actually a very ancient belief that’s now supported by leading-edge science. We know that the Divine Matrix exists, reflecting in our lives whatever we think, feel, emote, and believe in our hearts and minds. We’re aware that a subtle shift in the way we see ourselves is all that’s needed for that change to be mirrored in our health, careers, and relationships. And this is where the preposterous nature of this vicious cycle of fear becomes apparent.
Key 18: The root of our “negative” experiences may be reduced to one of three universal fears (or a combination of them): abandonment, low self-worth, or lack of trust.
If we want something to change, we have to break the cycle and give the Matrix something different to reflect. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It may be deceptively simple, since changing the way we see ourselves is probably the most difficult practice that we’ll ever be faced with in our lives. Because of our inner beliefs, we experience in our outer world the grand battle that’s playing out within the hearts and minds of every person alive—the struggle that defines who we believe we are.
In the presence of all the reasons not to trust, we’re asked to find a way out of the prison that our fear locks us into. Each day, the experiences of life ask us to show ourselves how much we can trust … not simply to blindly trust for no reason, but to really feel the safety and security that are ours in the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
READLNG THE MIRRORS OF
RELATLONSHLP: MESSAGES
FROM OURSELVES
“Life is a mirror and will reflect
back to the thinker
what he thinks into it.”
— Ernest Holmes (1887–1960),
founder of Science of Mind
“The kingdom is inside of you,
and it is outside of you… .
There is nothing hidden
which will not become manifest.”
— Jesus’s words, recorded by
Didymos Judas Thomas,
from the Nag Hammadi library
In addition to being the container for our experiences, the Divine Matrix provides the quantum mirror that shows us in our world what we’ve created in our beliefs. Through our relationships with other people, we’re presented with the clearest examples of what those beliefs really are. Sometimes our mirrors are obvious, and we say, “So! That’s the way things work.” And other times they surprise us by reflecting the subtle reality of a judgment that’s very different from what we’d thought we believed.
Regardless of what the mirrors teach us, it’s by spending time with others that they become the triggers for just the right emotions and feelings at precisely the right times in our lives to help us heal our greatest hurts and deepest wounds. Our relationships show us our joys and loves, as well as our fears. But because we seldom become “stuck” in joy, purely pleasurable relationships are generally not the triggers for the profound lessons of life.
Relationships are our opportunity to see ourselves in every way imaginable. From the greatest betrayals of our trust to our most desperate attempts to fill our emptiness, everyone—including our co-workers, classmates, and life mates—shows us something about ourselves. If we have the wisdom to recognize the messages that are being mirrored to us, we discover the beliefs that cause the suffering in our lives.
I’ve met people who tell me that they’re taking a break from all relationships or will never be in another one because they find them too painful. The truth is that we’re always in a relationship with someone or something. Even if we live on a mountaintop and never see another human, we must still interact with that mountain and ourselves. In those interactions, we’ll be shown the true reflection of our core beliefs. The reason? Our mirrors in the world never stop—they’re always working. There’s no escape! And the mirrors never lie.
Key 19: Our true beliefs are mirrored in our most intimate relationships.
The Divine Matrix provides a neutral surface that simply reflects what’s projected onto it. The question is whether or not we understand its language. Perhaps a better way to ask this is: Do we recognize the messages that we’re sending to ourselves as the Divine Matrix?
In the 20th century, Science of Mind founder Ernest Holmes stated, “Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.”1 Numerous ancient traditions recognized this connection and valued the reflections of relationships as the path to wholeness and union with the Divine. In the Coptic, Gnostic, and Essene texts that were discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, for example, we’re shown a series of mirrors that will face everyone at some point in their lives. Although they may always be present, it seems that there’s an order to the way we’ll recognize them.
In these spiritual traditions, it was believed that as our painful feelings are healed, we master the patterns that allow the hurt to exist. In other words, to overcome the fear that may be in our lives today, we must first master the patterns that allow it to exist.
Figure 12. Our relationship mirrors listed in the order that we usually learn them. In general, the most obvious mirrors are recognized first, allowing the power of the deeper, subtler ones to emerge and become clear.
In the following sections, we’ll explore the five mirrors of relationship from the most obvious to the most subtle. The resolution of each in sequence is the coded equation that allows for our greatest healing in the least amount of time. Scientific research has shown that as we change the way we feel about what’s happened to us in our past, we change the chemistry of our bodies in the present. Living in a universe where the way we feel about ourselves is mirrored through the world around us, it becomes more important than ever to recognize what our relationships are saying to us and learn to read the messages of the Divine Matrix.
THE FIRST MIRROR:
REFLECTIONS OF THE MOMENT
“You read the face of the sky and of
the earth, but you have not recognized
the one who is before you, and you do
not know how to read this moment.” 2
— The Gospel of Thomas
Animals are great mirrors for triggering the subtle emotions that we call our “issues.” In the innocence of just being who they are, they can ignite powerful feelings of control and judgment about the way things should or shouldn’t be. Cats offer a perfect example.
My first experience with cats began in the winter of 1980. I was working for a petroleum company as a computer geologist and living in a small apartment in Denver. As a member of the newly formed technical-services department, I spent most of my days, evenings, and weekends learning the ins and outs of new computers and applying what I learned to the traditional concepts of petroleum geology. I hadn’t really considered owning any pets simply because I was never home enough to care for one.
One weekend a friend was visiting and brought me an unexpected gift: a beautiful orange and blond kitten about five weeks old. He was the runt of the litter and named Tigger after the tiger in the classic Winnie-the-Pooh children’s books. Even though I wasn’t allowed to have a pet in my apartment, I was immediately drawn to Tigger and found that the big presence he carried in his small body added so much to my life that I missed him when he wasn’t there. Telling myself it could be only temporary, I decided to bend the rules a bit and keep him. And just like that, Tigger and I were a family.
Immediately, I trained my new friend to honor the “forbidden zones” in our home. He was taught to stay off of the couches, counters, and the to
p of the refrigerator. Above all, he couldn’t be perched in the windowsills for the world to see while I was at work. Each day I’d come home and he would be sleeping in one of our approved places. Everything seemed to be working out great with our secret relationship.
One day I came home from work earlier than usual. As I opened the door to my apartment, Tigger was awakened from a deep cat sleep right on the kitchen counter next to the sink—a spot we had definitely identified as being off-limits. He was as surprised to see me come through the door as I was to find him on the counter. Immediately, he jumped down, returned to his place on the bed, and waited to see what I would do. Now I was curious: Was this just a one-time incident, or was it an indication of what really happened when I left the house each day? Did he know my patterns so well that he would be in the right place at the right time just as I arrived home each evening?
That day I tried an experiment. Walking out to my balcony overlooking a beautiful greenbelt below, I slipped behind the drapes to hide and wait, pretending that I’d left for work. Within minutes, Tigger jumped from the bed and went directly into the kitchen. Believing that I was gone, he returned to his perch on the counter next to the toaster and the juice machine. He was so comfortable in this place that he began to nod off and was soon fast asleep next to the sink, somewhere he’d never go if he knew that I was home.
It was only when I spoke with friends who also had cats that I learned something probably every other owner of a feline has already discovered: You don’t train a cat! While there are certainly exceptions, generally cats do what cats do. They like high places and will gravitate to the highest ones—the same countertops, refrigerators, and windowsills that are forbidden zones. Although they may honor our rules while in our presence, when they’re alone, cats rule their own worlds.
