SGM Sept. 2013 Weekly Message Three: “Are You Stuck In A Perspective?”
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Welcome back to the September 2013 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM! This week we continue our exploration of “The 12 Stages of Healing” by Dr. Donald Epstein.
At a certain point in your life, it may occur to you that what’s happening in your life and your body are related. And, you might begin to see how they are connected to a certain way of looking at life—a way of thinking, feeling, and being in the world, a perspective that you’re holding onto. This is Stage Three of the Healing process.
As we enter Stage Three, Dr. Epstein says, “we will experience an uneasy feeling that ‘my body (or mind) is holding onto something’ or ‘I want to move ahead, but I can’t.’ In other words, we realize we are stuck in an old way of seeing things—we are stuck in a perspective. This realization may occur gradually or suddenly.” (p.43, The 12 Stages of Healing)
We start to see that the Suffering we experienced in Stage One is related to that pattern we discovered in Stage Two which is connected to an outlook on life. This leads to an important realization. As Epstein says, “When we realize that we are stuck in a perspective, we also realize that we are responsible for the result.” (p.45, 12SOH)
With that insight, we start to accept a greater degree of responsibility for our sufferings and disappointments. We may not know exactly how we are looking at things, or how this relates to the experiences we’re having, but we have the basic idea that our outlook is connected to what we are experiencing in life and we acknowledge that we might be able to do something about that.
So, what’s the nature of these connections? How does this all work?
The answer lies in your nervous system.
Your nervous system is the intermediary between what’s happening inside you and around you. On the inside, you have the trillion or so cells that make up your body and the impulses of the Universal Life Force that permeate that cellular network. On the outside, you have the wide world of thoughts, energies, feelings, and forces that surround you. Your nervous system mediates between these two worlds.
Your nervous system receives impressions, signals, and forces from the external environment and interprets what these mean for your inner well-being. It then initiates electrical-chemical adaptations to your environment based on its perceptions. For example, you see a car coming and you stop yourself from walking across the street.
Your nervous system also receives impressions, signals, and forces from your internal environment and calculates what these mean for your well-being and translates these into actions that might be taken in the outside world. A simple example of this is when hunger signals stimulate you to find food.
How your nervous system interprets the signals it receives from inside you and around you has a lot to do with perspectives that you’ve learned to hold. These perspectives are basically patterns of recognizing stimuli and responding appropriately. Some of these have been passed down in your DNA and some you’ve learned through your life experiences. Some are part of your “nature” as a human being and some have been “nurtured” or conditioned into you by what’s happened to you so far in this life.
Using these perspectives or “neural response networks ” your nervous system handles innumerable signals, interpretations, and adaptations at any moment. And, most all of this happens beneath your conscious awareness. Yet, certain prominent interactions bubble up into your awareness calling for a conscious contribution. For example, illness, chronic pain, or failure at something you’re trying to achieve, all ask for your conscious intervention. These “negative outcomes” call for you to become more conscious of what you’re thinking, feeling, and doing, so you can appropriately adapt, heal, and grow.
Fortunately, your body handles most of this using reliable programs and perspectives that have been tested and proven over the millennia. Yet certain of these programs become outdated or ineffective for you any longer. It’s these programs that are brought to your attention through suffering. This is when you begin to notice an ineffective pattern and start to wonder if you are stuck in a perspective that is no longer serving you.
Some of your programs and perspectives are empowering and some are limiting. It’s the limiting ones that get outdated, get in your way, and manifest as disease, failure, and discomfort. These are the ones calling for conscious intervention. So, let’s explore these a bit more.
Here are some common limiting perspectives summarized in some familiar thoughts:
-The world is a jungle, you’ve got to fight to survive.
-Life is a struggle, and you’ve got to work hard for everything you get.
-I’m not worthy of that kind of success, that’s for other people.
-I’m never enough; not good enough, pretty enough, talented enough, deserving enough. . .
-Wealth is bad; it’s for those greedy, selfish, rich people.
-Money is the root of evil.
-There’s not enough time in the day. There’s never enough time.
-There’s only so much to go around.
-I’ll never get ahead.
-Life is just too hard.
-I’ve got to be busy all the time.
-It’s lazy to sit and do nothing.
-No one wants to be with me. No one likes me.
-I’m unlovable. . .
You have the idea. You’re probably well aware of some of your own limiting perspectives. You may have heard these thoughts in your head since you were a child. Yet, you may not know the extent to which they control your mind, your feelings, and your behavior. You may not realize that, until they really take a toll on your body and your life.
These perspectives actually shape your posture, your physiology, your bio-chemistry, and how you think feel, and behave. You can sense this when you meet others. You might notice their body language, their tone of voice, or the way they interpret and describe what’s going on in their life.
It can be harder to see these perspectives in ourselves. It’s the old story about the fish not understanding what water is because that’s the world it swims in all the time. It’s hard to see your own perspectives. It’s hard to see the lenses that you are looking through.
Yet it’s so important to understand your dominant perspectives because, when you interpret what is happening inside and around you from a limiting perspective, it shapes the messages that are given to your cells. For example, if you interpret what is happening as threatening, your muscles tighten, your posture hunches forward, your heart beats faster, and your brain goes into survival mode. These physiological changes affect your health, what you think, how you feel, and what you see as real and possible for you.
Your habitual limiting perspectives are actually stored in your cells. For example, say you were in an accident or a trauma that was emotionally shocking. At that moment, the trauma is likely more than you can consciously process and it becomes stored as tension in your cells until a later time when you are able to process it and release it. This is a protective mechanism, like an animal’s “freeze response” in the face of danger.
This does have some survival value. It reminds you to be on the lookout for similar experiences, so you can avoid them. Yet, at a certain point that survival response is no longer necessary—and you need to let it go. Illness or frustrations in your life can highlight these old responses that are no longer serving you, so you can release them and move forward. In Stage Three, the experience of being stuck in an old perspective that no longer serves you comes to the fore.
You can begin to get a grip on your own limiting perspectives by:
– looking for repeating patterns of frustration in your life
-identifying spots where your body feels tense or locked
-noticing where your breathing feels restricted
-pausing when you feel agitated, upset, or angry and consciously noting what precipitated those feelings
In addition, Dr. Epstein describes a simple breathing exercise to help you get in touch with the felt experience of your limiting perspectives. Let me briefly describe the practice, then, I highly recommend that you take a few minutes to go through it and notice anything that comes up. Here it is:
(adapted from p.59, 12SOH)
You can do this exercise sitting up or lying down. Allow at least several minutes to do this slowly, consciously, and thoroughly.
Place one hand on top of the other, palms down, just below your neck, near your collarbones. As you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, say the statement, “I am stuck right here.” If you notice that this area feels stuck, tense, or agitated, simply say, “I acknowledge this region, I’m sorry I haven’t noticed you before” as you continue to breathe. Stay with this spot until you feel ready to move on.
Then, move your hands down to your heart and repeat the process.
Continue moving your hands down to different areas of your body, breathing, and saying the statement, “I am stuck right here.” In any areas that feel stuck, tense, or agitated say, “I acknowledge this region, I’m sorry I haven’t noticed you before,” as you continue to breathe.
As you move through this process, see if you can acknowledge what is happening, without trying to change it. Just notice any tension, acknowledge it, and breathe. Make note of any thoughts or feelings that come up. Whatever you feel is fine. Your body knows what to do.
I would like to hear any comments or questions on this week’s message in the Discussion below.
In next week’s “Meditation of the Month,” we’ll practice noticing a perspective associated with an area of frustration or suffering in your life to help you move on to the next stage of healing.
Until next time,
What is one area of your life in which you’d like to better understand a limiting perspective you hold?
Kevin