Jealousy is a particularly difficult negative emotion to write about for me, probably because I have mostly been on the victim side of people being jealous of me. I have more experience with trying to cope with jealous people than being jealous myself. It doesn’t come up that often for me. I will do the best I can in explaining it so that when it comes upon you, you can have some awareness and tools about how to deal with it. It can very destructive.

Jealousy is the feeling you get when what you have (materially speaking) comes under threat of being lost. Most often, people talk about jealousy in terms of relationships like when a committed partner spends time with others outside of the committed relationship, but it is quite common with leaders as well. When you feel jealousy, it means that you feel threatened that you are going to lose what you perceive to have, but what it should indicate to you is that you are lacking in basic relational capacities around closeness and intimacy. Feeling jealous means that you have issues with developing intimacy. If the jealous feeling takes over the person, then the ego mind often tries to use power or intimidation to keep what it has. Instead of doing the inner work of developing intimacy and closeness with others, the tendency is to use power in the wrong way to keep what you have. If you feel jealous and you are resorting to trying to force your will on others, then it means your relationship or position in an organization is already in big trouble. When you get jealous, the ego mind tries to make you think that the other person is the problem not you. People, who try use power and intimidation, always end up where they actually are when jealousy strikes, empty and alone.

Relational abilities, where you are trying to get close to others, are largely built on the fundamental process of seeing the positive in others and acknowledging them. When jealousy takes over the mind, people make small negatives into big threats. It takes them away from closeness rather than getting closer. You need an act of self-discipline to humble yourself to get out of the addictive state of using power when jealousy strikes because the use of power can be a drug like state. In extreme cases of territoriality people can become addictive to abusing and killing others because the use of power is such a strong feeling especially when intimacy is so hard for them to feel.

Jealous is not the same as envy even though people use them interchangeably. Jealous is about protecting what you have, whereas envy is about what you don’t have. Jealousy makes you use power to keep what you have like a title, whereas envy tries to find shortcuts to getting what you don’t have.

What can you do if you feel jealous?

Step 1. Recognize the feeling, especially the tendency to blow up small negatives in others so that you feel justified in ending the relationships with them.

Step 2. Get counseling help or some type of outside support so that the addictive processes of power do not take over you.

Step 3. Believe that learning how to get close to others in positive ways is extremely more satisfying than being protective and threatened all the time. Humble yourself so that you can begin to learn what you do not know how to do. If you have used charm to get in a relationship, then you are going to have let go of your arrogance about how good you are. Charm is not closeness. It is attracting someone for your own gain. There is nothing mutual in the use of charm.

Step 4. Inevitably the roots of jealousy stem from having been abused; so you are going to need help in dealing with the complexities of abuse.

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It is actually very rare for people who feel jealous to seek help because the belief that they are right and others are wrong is so strong with them. They also believe that intimidation and power and the use of constant criticism can keep what they have.

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Posted on February 15, 2024 by dreamsforpeace

The Code of Envy: Killer of Relationships/Door to Intimacy

Before we go too far into understanding about envy, we first have to differentiate it from jealousy, because even the dictionary has it wrong (at least in my understanding). It is useful to have a clear distinction. Envy is the emotion you feel when you desire an end state, hope that it will happen, but then do not make efforts to get there. The end result of envy is that you get nothing and kill the positive relationships in your life. Jealousy, on the other hand, is when you already have something like an established relationship or a title, and then you feel like it is under threat, so you become protective.

So imagine that you see a couple who is affectionate, loving, and caring towards each other. You would be caught in the snare of envy if you found yourself desiring the state that the couple has, maybe making an effort to reach out to a potential partner, but unable to engage in practices that foster closeness. Envy is a hope without any work. It destroys relationships because it causes you to think love is coming your way without making positive efforts. For a long time in the culture of movies the myth of happy-ever-after or being taken care of was thoroughly perpetuated in most romance films. There was little understanding that relationships have their own science that make them work. Thinking that you are going to automatically be loved forever or have everything positive come your way without engaging in positive relational behavior is the definition of doom.

It doesn’t help that positive relational behavior is never taught in school in the way that the principles of mathematics or physical sciences are taught. There is virtually no relational curriculum in schools.

If you would ask me what are the keys to a successful relationship, I would give you the following four things to work on.

Find the positives in the other person and acknowledge them constantly.
Listen non-judgmentally to what is going on with others without trying to fix anything.
Do more than your share of the work. Absolutely avoid comparing.
Feel free to establish boundaries with others.

If you get struck with envy, it probably means you are missing at least one of the above processes. Envy is the messenger that comes when you have not developed certain heart related processes. So when it strikes and then you get nowhere, you have some place from which you can start the inner work. Being loving and intimate with others means you are in control of the relational processes and can use them effectively. It takes lots of efforts, to learn how to become intimate with others.

If you have envy for what your neighbors have like a bigger or more elegantly decorated house or the type of car that they have, it means that some relational processes are missing in you. If you try to feel better by having a better house (not that a nice place to live is bad thing), you have forgotten to work on the self that lives in the house and relates to people. Work on your relational self first, then improve your house. This is because your higher self wants to have positive relationships that are loving and close first. Then you are ready for a space to be in together with others. Thinking that the physical space will bring you closer to others is a recipe for disaster. It actually takes you further away.

Mostly envy kills your relational life by living in hope of something positive happening to you where you are NOT the primary actor. Envy is when you have hope and then give the control of it happening over to someone else or some organization like the government or your employer.

There is also a large sector of almost every population where their hope for a better life is in the past. They actually want to return to a former state of affairs to make themselves happy. In every case where people want to return to the past for their joy you can see that they are having a hard time negotiating their current relational life. Instead of putting in the effort to develop relational skills, they want to return to some fictitious time where they got along with everyone else, when in actuality they are just forgetting that they never did learn how to work cooperatively with others. They almost always have some sort of history of being abused or abandoned.

Work on the basics of relationship building and then you will always have lots of friends and joy!

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Posted on January 14, 2024 by dreamsforpeace

The Grief Code: Doorway to Endurance

Before I explain grief, which is a very challenging negative emotion, I am going to do a quick review list of the negative codes we have already covered.

Disappointment: Attachment to the wrong expectations that brings energy down and makes you think you have to change everything. Code: Let go of expectations, remember and do more of the positive processes that are already working.

Frustration: Attachment to the wrong processes or ways of doing things. You keep doing the same things only maybe more intensely that give you the same bad results. Code: The goal or expectation is correct, but the processes are not. Change the way you are doing things, while holding onto the goal.

Anger: Attachment to something or someone outside of yourself being to blame for what is happening. Literally the loss of a cool mind. Code: Let go of blaming, go into a peaceful, tranquil, detached, patient state so that you can get guidance to move forward.

Anxiety: Attachment to the negative imagination that your mind makes up to keep you from moving forward. Overwhelm is the blowing up in the mind of negative non-realities. Origin is abandonment. Code: Let go of negative imagining, recognize it came from being all alone, then have the confidence to act with abilities that you already have.

Fear: Attachment to a negative outcome because of a memory/memories of negative experiences that makes it difficult to go for new things or a positive future. Code: Let go of negative experience, then have courage to dive into new things and develop new abilities.

Grief is the experience you have when something comes to an end that you didn’t desire such as the loss of job or a friend or the death of person close to you. Disappointment, frustration, and anger are emotions that signal that you are still in a situation and need to keep going. Grief and sadness come when something is over. The big difficulty with grief is that the loss takes down your energy putting you in a depressed action state. It is very difficult to move forward or get back on your feet when grief strikes because there is no energy. You get stuck in down feelings.

Before we talk about the attachments with grief, everyone should know that it is nearly impossible to not feel down when you experience loss especially with losing people that are close to you. Time is often your best friend with grief so that you can accustom yourself to your new life without the person or the job.

There are two types of attachments that occur when you experience grief. There is first of all the attachment to the memory of the loss. The mind gets stuck remembering the person or job being with you and how it went away. For instance, if you lose a family member or close friend, you remember the loss, the person going away, and then you get very stuck in staying down. The second type of attachment with grief is the false imagined hope that someone or something new is going to take you out of the negative state so that you can feel up again. In both cases you have to go through a process of letting go of the attachments. The challenging part is that grief keeps your energy very low so you often feel you cannot move the energy.

It is hard to imagine when you have lost a loved one or a job or an important contract or game that life is going to ever get back to some semblance of an up state. You can give yourself plenty of time to do it. When you are able to realize that letting go is the first step, and then begin to let go of the attachment, the actual code is to remember your positive abilities and be able to use them endlessly. Endurance, which is the ability to stay positive for a long time while doing positive capabilities, is what grief is asking out of you.

Grief tells you to play the long game, not the short one. It is difficult to have a lot of gratitude for what you have already developed inside of you when you are down and attached, but being grateful for your gifts and preparing yourself for doing things for a long time takes you instantly out of grief and depressed action. It does this because it lets you know that you didn’t have to achieve results in a super accelerated manner. You can keep using your abilities and then keep using them some more. The results will accumulate over time.

It is not as easy as I stated because there are a lot of feelings to work through. When I was fired from particular jobs that I had and then lost all of the programs that I had helped to build, I didn’t want to go somewhere new and start again. It is because I didn’t have the long vision. I didn’t see that what that the positive I had done was never lost. It still exists today in the minds and hearts of all of the students I worked with.

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The next stage after the loss is a continuation of the same, but it is hard to see it at the time. Whatever has given you success, will continue to give you success. That is the message, the code, of grief. Stay in the game and keep playing it. The attachments will want to make you give up especially if the loss comes from betrayal or sudden deaths.

Grief does not require you to develop something new in you. It asks you to remember the positives developed in the past and keep doing them forever. Fear is the emotion that requires new development, not grief. It is easy to throw in the towel after a great loss and try something new or give up completely. The code is to back to what works and keep doing it endlessly. When we lost our daughter a couple of years ago, one of the things that helped a huge amount in the grieving process was to take long hikes in the forest. It was like i could practice being in something for a long time, but it took me more than a year before I could start running again consistently. It was like the grief knocked all of the endurance out of me, and then I had to learn how to stay in things for a long time.

Endurance is the quality that lets you know that things will be lasting for a long time if you can remember the positive processes.

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Posted on January 10, 2024 by dreamsforpeace

The Code of Disappointment: Beware of Expectations.

It is a little over a week since New Year’s Day. It is a good time to write about disappointment if you have already given up on the resolutions you might have set.

Disappointment is the negative emotion we feel when an expectation has not been met. It has the effect of taking the wind out of our sails, like having the our balloon popped. In that regard it approaches something like grief or sadness in that the energy we are left with is quite depressed. Whereas frustration lets you know that you have the wrong process in getting there, but the right goal or expectation, disappointment is the communication you receive inwardly that tells you that the expectation is incorrect, but the process is not.

For instance, you are home for a Christmas holiday expecting to have deep and loving connections with family members and friends. After a week of hoping, you are left with emptiness, maybe loneliness with little connection. The expectation was that others were going to connect with you, but they didn’t. When disappointment strikes, it wants to give you one very clear message, which is to drop the expectation of what you might get from others, and then engage enthusiastically in the process that will help you connect with others. Disappointment tells you that you need more active process without expectation. When you engage enthusiastically in practices that connect deeply and profoundly with others, good things will eventually happen. If you expect that others will do the engaging work, you are in for some depressed times.

Suppose that you enter a race with the expectation of a fast time or perhaps going for a job interview with the expectation of getting the job. When you don’t get the fast time or get the job, disappointment is likely to strike. You can ask yourself what you were hoping to get out of the fast time or securing the job. What is the fast time going to give you? Whatever you were hoping for is the wrong expectation. What is needed is to remember the positive practices that allow you to be a good runner or the positive abilities that make you great at your work and then do them more. Since disappointment brings a person down, remembering the right process and then being enthusiastic about doing it keeps you up and engaged and brings great long term results.

The tendency with disappointment, such as when a team loses a championship game, is to focus on the things that they did wrong and make lots of changes. What is actually needed is to focus on the positive processes that they did to get to the championship game and keep doing them enthusiastically. The loss doesn’t matter. What matters is what was developed in the athletes and the team along the way. When a team wins a championship, they can experience temporary elation, but then quickly can slip into big disappointment because what they were hoping from the win, like recognition is only ever a temporary thing. The real joy is in what was developed along the way, the creativity, the determination, and the comradery.

Most of us tend to expect more out of leaders than they are capable of giving and when we get the top job in a company, we tend to be a disappointment to ourselves because of our misguided expectations. Leadership works when the the leaders remember and practice the processes that work and are enthusiastic about them.

It is so important to differentiate anger and frustration from disappointment because when you have frustration for not getting to a goal it means that you are stuck in processes that do not give you good results. It is the differentiation of the feeling that is absolutely vital. If you watch a coach yelling at the players for a poor performance out of frustration, it means that he needs to learn some new ways of doing things. If disappointment sets in, it means that positive processes need to be remembered and practiced enthusiastically. Before a recent game I heard coach talk about what the most important ability was in competitive match was to make positive adjustments along the way. What if you as a coach or manager had the understanding of the difference between frustration and disappointment? You could go to the midway break in a game or to the next game and know how to focus. If you feel disappointment, keep doing the positive things that work with more enthusiasm. If you feel frustrated, change what you are doing. It is an amazing formula for success.

What is the wrong expectation? What is the correct process to be done enthusiastically?

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Posted on December 21, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

The Code for Frustration: Right Goal-Wrong Process to Get There

In the last post we discussed the negative emotion of anger and how it takes you out of your calm and cool-headed mind with a lot of fire. If you were to have a dream where your house is on fire, you know that your anger is calling you to being cool-headed.

I like to discuss frustration closely to anger because it has the same kind of strong active energy to it. Sometimes people confuse anger and frustration or may have a combination of the two emotions. While anger is about having a really hot head, frustration is about banging your head. When frustration presents itself, it means that you have a goal in mind, but your attempts to accomplish it or make adequate success have failed repeatedly. The huge tendency with frustration, when failure has occurred, is to do the same activities with more energy and more often. It is as if you believe that doing more of the same thing that failed is going to give you a different result. It doesn’t.

The attachment with frustration is to the process or method of getting to the goal. This is what educators traditionally tried to do with students who presented learning challenges. The idea was to give more repetition of the strategy that didn’t work, and take away the places in the child’s life where they were having success such as in sport. Obviously it was a failed strategy, but people attached to a single-process such as repetition were in the belief that children with learning challenges were just stubborn. You know when the process is incorrect because frustration is the feeling. When we discuss disappointment, you will see that the opposite is true. Disappointment means that the goal or expectation is incorrect, but the process is on the right track. It just needs more energy.

What should you do if you are stuck in frustration? The first step is to recognize the feeling by saying it. ” I am really frustrated!” That lets you know that you are attached to how to make it to the goal. If you can allow yourself to let go of your attachment, which may not be all that easy, then you can start to have some flexibility and creativity about how to get to the end. While the go to positive energy for anger is patience and calm, the energy called for with frustration is flexibility and creativity.

If anger is mixed with frustration, then first you calm yourself, and then you invoke your creative and flexible parts. In many cultures people get stuck in thinking that hard work, toughness, self-discipline, and responsibility will solve everything because they are so valuable to a person’s life, but there are places where love and compassion, patience, peacefulness, creativity or encouragement are what is needed. Sometimes courage is what you have to be. Frustration let’s you know that a new something is needed.

Sometimes the attachment associated with frustration is there because there is a fear of trying something new. What if the solution to a relational issue is NOT toughing it out? What if you had to be closer or more loving? That would be very threatening to some people who haven’t developed that virtue yet. By letting go of the attachment to doing things in the same manner that you are used to but is not getting results, you open up whole new avenues of where you can develop. It is as if you are adding more tools to your toolbox. It is particularly problematic for people who are gifted intellectually, but are not so in other areas. Gifted academic students may find it very easy to breeze through classes without ever having to put in much effort, but have a terrible time in relationships because the relational tools don’t come as easily as the academics do.

If you can think of frustration as one of those great doorways to new develop, you can actually be excited when it appears. You can say, “Yay! Frustration!” ”I get to try something new.”

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Posted on December 14, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

The Code of Anger: Doorway to Tranquility, Patience, Detachment, Calm

It is rush hour, the traffic is heavy, you are trying to make a left turn into busy traffic. It seems like it will take forever to make the turn. Worse yet, you have been recently cut off by other people in a hurry. OR you are in a meeting giving a proposal or ideas that you hope others will accept, but a few of the key decision makers do not see your point of view and remain stubborn in blocking you. Worse yet, your country is in the finals of a big worldwide tournament, and towards the end of the game, one of the players of your team makes a serious error that costs your team the championship.

When you get angry because you cannot get to where you want to go or have the result you were hoping for, your ego wants nothing more than to become heated and then unleash blame on everyone else in the world. Anger is the energy that tells you that something is not going your way. It expresses itself in all kinds of ugly ways. It can get violent both inwardly and outwardly, but mostly it takes you nowhere and gets you nothing.

Some people seem to think that is therapeutic to get your anger out in a violent way like taking up boxing or hitting a pillow or throwing things. No doubt, when a leader unleashes an angry barrage of insults at a team, the leader feels better for having gotten it out or you probably feel better for a second when you beep the horn in traffic when someone cuts you off, but the temporary responses do not address what is really happening internally. They tend to grow more negative over time if left unchecked.

Expressing the anger is helpful, but only when it is done in a manner that keeps the responsibility for solving it with yourself. When you yell at someone or honk your horn loudly, your intention is to give the problem over to the other person to solve. It doesn’t help you in the long term. The other day I was in a conversation with someone who kept subtly invalidating what I was saying, while making what he was saying much more important. At first I didn’t recognize what he was doing, but then I felt really angry inside and had to use all of my will to stay calm and patient. Later I told my wife what was happening, which was very helpful for me. In the midst of telling her I could see that the issue was that I was feeling invalidated. By getting the anger out in a calmer manner I could see that I could begin addressing the issue of invalidation and let go of what the other person was doing.

If you can feel the anger and then name it, then your higher self and conscious mind can begin to understand what is really calling to you. Anger tells you that you need to develop one of four major virtues, calmness, patience, detachment, or tranquility. If you live in country like the U.S., where how fast you get a job done is so important, then the virtue calling to you will most likely be patience. It is interesting that when a new president is elected in the U.S., it is the first 100 days in office and how much they can get done, that seem so important to everyone. The best advice I ever received when I became an administrator in a school or department was exactly the opposite. It was to wait for a year to make any big changes.

Patience allows you to take out of the equation of your life. It says, “What if time didn’t matter?” because it really never matters as much as we think.

Calmness allows you to ride the wave of other people’s anger and disruptions.

Detachment allows you to not have to feel really negative feelings when results do not go your way or people act in really absurd ways.

And tranquility allows you to be at peace with how bad things currently are or have been.

Having these virtues are like pure gold to your life. Every time you feel angry, it means that the virtues that are going to be golden to your life are calling you.

When are you likely to get angry? Which of the 4 golden virtues is calling you?

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Posted on December 2, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

The Code of Anxiety 2 Examples

In the last post I talked about how anxiety is the negative emotion that is trying to wake up confidence in yourself. Confidence is the ability to embrace the positive abilities that you already have developed so that you can put them into action. It is almost like a feeling of being grounded in yourself. I like to have people actually feel their bodies especially their feet on the ground when they are developing confidence. Anxiety tends to throw you into an airy space that is a bit nauseating.

Here are a few examples.

Being a workshop leader in a class. Anxiety tells you that you have the skills already to lead a successful workshop, but something is making you feel like it is all going to go wrong despite your preparation. It often happens when you change jobs or locations or the groups you are working with. You focus on the uncertainty of the new environment and not on the ability you already have. You can remember positive experiences in the past, embrace the positive energy, and then be present, being aware of what adjustments you need to make in the new environment.

The condition of the world. Today there is a war in Israel and another one in the Ukraine. When you put your focus on it and blow it up, your mind has a tendency to think that your world is going to fall apart, you are going to lose all of your resources, and then you have to be protective in the way you live your life and manage your resources. When you have confidence in your own abilities and embrace them, then they are going to work where you end up next even if you are a refugee or have to move entire continents. It is the emotion of anxiety that puts you in the air and sees negative, but it is the confidence that when you do what worked before, you are going to get great results again.

Anxiety is not fear. Fear lets you know that you have to develop something new in order to be successful. Worry lets you know that what worked before will work again. It is an important distinction. Fear is more of full bodied experienced. Anxiety is an up in the air feeling.

Your children’s or spouse’s future. When you worry a lot about your children or spouse, it really messes up the relationship with them because they want to have no part of being with you. Your worry causes a rift because your energy is so nauseating. If you are worried, it means you already know what what works with them. You just do not know how to embody or embrace the positive abilities that you have and keep practicing. You probably know that being supportive, being a good listener, being encouraging, and having good boundaries work. But worry makes you do things that don’t work. Then distance grows between you, and they have to figure out things on their own.

If you have fear for their future, then it means you haven’t developed an ability, usually being more encouraging. It usually means that you are very critical.

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Posted on November 23, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

The Anxiety Code: Moving Towards Confidence

Anxiety, for me, is like the emotional pandemic of our times. If we could all find a way to do a better job with anxiety, we could all be so much more productive. What is anxiety, aka, worry, and how does it operate?

I like to start talking about anxiety by comparing it to fear. Many people use the words interchangeable as if they mean the same, but they are very distinct emotions with very different outcome energies. Fear has the intention of developing something new inside by overcoming an experience that you or someone close to you has gone through. When you think about the doing the new thing, the mind remembers the bad thing that happened and then resists forward movement. For instance, I had the fear of some heights for some period of time because every time I would start feeling really up and high about what I was accomplishing, someone in leadership would get jealous and then I would be fired. I remember feeling this on canopy walks in the jungles of Southeast Asia. What the mind imagines as fearful is based on having had specific negative experiences.

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Anxiety is different than fear in that the mind makes up negative imaginations about the future that are not based upon any real world experiences. The origin of anxiety is some sense of having been abandoned or alone. In the state of unsettled abandonment the mind does all kinds of crazy things that are negative in nature. The more alone you feel the more you think the illusions are real. Feeling overwhelmed, which is like a type of anxiety, is when the illusions seem really huge. It tends to give a person paralysis of action. The most important thing in dealing with anxiety is to try to get into action. I remember reading how Lionel Messi, one the world’s greatest soccer players, would get very nervous before a match, but as soon as the game started and he was in his body acting, then all of the memory and confidence returned into him.

When you have anxiety, your mind suffers from a kind of memory loss. It cannot remember how to do things or that you are very competent at them. Instead it creates some type of illusion in the future which puts you in a state of inaction. The solution for anxiety is confidence. Confidence comes from being able to access the positive memories of what you are already able to do. Confidence gives you the ability to act knowing that you are going to get positive results, and if things go wrong, to learn from them and keep adjusting. Without confidence you always feel like you are on shaky ground, that something bad is probably going to happen, but the bad things only tend to happen as a result of inaction and not from what you are doing. It is because you are not acting or acting with a lot of nervousness that things go wrong.

The first step in being able to get to a confident state is to recognize that worry is an illusion. It is not real. It is also important to understand that the origin of your worrying habits began when you felt profoundly alone. You will notice, for instance, that when you are with a friend or a positive colleague or a good team of people, that you are much more confident than when you are alone. A lot of people experience overwhelming feelings when they are in big crowds all alone. Their minds go into memory loss and then they freeze.

To get the confidence going when you are going into a crowd, you can remember what works for you. If you have anxiety, you already know what to do. You just don’t know how to access it. It is not like fear where you have to develop something new. With anxiety you already have the ability, just no confidence. Your mind is making up ghost like experiences.

It is important to know what you are feeling and then trust the code. If you know that you are nervous, the code says that you already know how to do thing you want to do, but your mind goes off into la-la land from feeling alone. You cannot treat anxiety in the same way you treat fear or grief or hurt. It has its own code. The code is that you already know how to do the ability. It is a memory issue, not a possibility issue.

If you are worried about your children’s future, for instance, it means that you already know what to do. If you act from a worried parent , you will really mess up parenting. If you do the things that work, they will work again. Have confidence, meaning have memory. Do what already works.

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Posted on November 21, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Breaking the Code of Fear 2: Examples

In the last post I introduced what having fear means, which, in the simplest terms, means that you are being called to a form of courage. Remember to see my videos on tiktok. They are also very informative. I am “dreamdoctor9”.

Fear of Being Constrained. This often occurs when you have been parented by a perfectionist or have one as a supervisor. Metaphorically it is like a constrictor snake like a python. The tendency when being constrained is to try to do things without mistakes which is impossible. This then leads to inaction. The fear is trying to take you to more freedom in action which is part of creativity or playfulness. It usually resides in the lungs or throat. The important thing is to not fight all of the rules and procedures that perfectionists demand, but to embrace freedom in action such as being much more playful in your artwork.

Fearful of Being Dominated/Overpowered: The origin of domination can be parental such as having a parent who uses to force to keep you from moving in a direction that is consistent with your own true self. It can also be cultural or experiential such as the domination of men over women, one race over another. When you feel the fear of being overpowered, it results in feeling weak and lowly, unable to act. Metaphorically is like an angry grizzly bear. The fear goes away when you are your own grizzly bear of empowerment and strength inside. Inner strength keeps you going even when the odds are against you.

Fearful of Being Attacked Fiercely: Being attacked fiercely is like what happens in a sexual assault or an aggressive theft. It tends to be a single event that leaves you feeling completely completely defenseless and vulnerable. When you have this kind of fear, then you need an assertive type of courage. Assertive courage allows you to attack a goal as if you are a shark biting into it or a lion pouncing. The strength energy is a bit more enduring, but the assertive energy is required only for short burst to get things moving forward.

Fearful of Loud Noises or Crowds: Crowds or loud people have a tendency to shut down your ability to listen to your own inner guidance and wisdom. It is like a noisy, negative politician who is trying to prevent the truth from coming out or prevent people from from actually thinking about issues. Metaphorically the energy needed when you have this fear is the ability to go inward, to be a true introvert, cave-like. Being able to go inward for guidance keeps you on your own path rather than being subjected to someone else’s path.

Fearful of Drowning: The fear drowning has a lot to do with being in a really bad relationship where you are immersed in another person’s negative energy. It could also be a group of people like in a workplace. When you feel like you are drowning in a relationship, it means that you need to have the ability to related to other people’s positive energy, to connect with the positive energy in others. As you develop this ability the person that is drowning you will fade away.

Feel free to tell me about what energy your fear is calling you to.

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Posted on November 17, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Breaking the Code of Fear: Becoming More Courageous

Before I write about fear and where it is trying to take you, I want to let you know that you can watch some of my videos on dream interpretations on tiktok. I am Dreamdoctor9. It is a new medium for me.

Fear is by far my favorite negative emotion because I have a huge amount of confidence based upon a great deal of experience that it is going to take me to a positive place if I process it. If your a man reading this having grown up in the current world we inhabit, at least some aspect believes that having fear and admitting that you have fear is unmanly. One of the current expressions that people use, when they want men to deny or bury their fears, is “Man Up!” Basically it is saying to bury your fear or put it aside, and then face the thing you have to face with courage. Sometimes that works in the short term. It’s like what we see in movies where men or nowadays, women, are at a bar, they take a drink of whiskey and down it all in one gulp, as if that is going to give the courage to “man up”, and then they go off and act with unending courage. I don’t know why the movie making industry loves this image of alcohol and courage, but it definitely has persisted.

What is the meaning of fear? Fear has a very simple meaning, which if you get it, will be awesome for you. You feel fear when you come up against something for which you do not have a current ability in your arsenal to overcome. It calls you to develop something new in yourself that you have never fully had before. It is not to be confused with anxiety which is the inability to act confidently with what you have already developed. Fear means you have something new to develop in yourself. That is the code. When you feel fear, the first question can be what do I need to develop in myself that I have never had before or have not had in a new way.

So if this is true, then how do you find out what the fear is calling you to. There is a procedure that I use, which I actually learning in my dream work. The new ability is the opposite positive energy from what you are fearful of. Let’s take a common fear, the fear of venomous snakes. If you live in certain parts to world where there are a lot of venomous snakes, then the fear is going to be more real than imagined, so even though I am going to treat snakes metaphorically, you still have to have a lot of respect for the danger in the way you would with a grizzly bear.

The fear of venomous snakes in a metaphoric sense is the fear of venomous people, who are people that poison your life with criticism and use vicious behind the back gossip and backbiting. Their intention is driven by jealousy because they cannot stand to see you being successful and are threatened by your positive abilities. Ambush predatory people are usually good at what they do so the first part of the new ability is to stay as far away from them as you can. You have to give their abilities respect. The reason you have the fear is that you or someone really close to you, like a parent, has been struck down by them in the past which now makes you weary of going forward with the things you want to do. When you are hesitant or hiding, then venomous person has done their job. It is what makes them exhilarated. They love being harmful to others almost like a drugged state.

You are first respectful by giving the predators distance, then you become a positive snake in your own positive environment, which is to be extremely flexible and go into places that need change where no one else is willing to go. The venomous people will not go there, but if you are flexible and courageous then you can go into difficult problem areas and make huge changes. This is what the fear is calling you to. Wouldn’t that be amazing if you could do that?

So remember the code for fear is NEW ABILITY which always requires an act of courage.

Step one. Name the fear, Man-down. Say it. When you say it, it automatically loses some of its hold over you. Put it out there so you can deal with it. Name that fear.

Step two. Find out how it makes you act using fighting or hiding or freezing.

Step three. Find out what the opposite of the fear. Name the positive opposite.

Step four. Begin to find the first steps in applying the new ability.

Note: Some fears are the result of intense trauma. You won’t be able to deal with trauma on your own. Get help. Lots of it. Man down, admit the fear, and go for help.

Example: (if not trauma based) fearful of speaking in front of group.

The fear of speaking in front of group is based on the fear of everyone in the audience looking at you and judging you in a negative way or putting you down. You can only have the fear if you or someone really close has experienced it before.

The opposite of the fear of being judged is the ability to love connecting to people with positive words. In the fear state, you see people looking at you. In the positive new state you see yourself making an impact on them.

Just remember that the code to fear is developing a new ability. You can start doing it today. Write me at dreamsforpeace@gmail.com or leave a comment and I can help you identify the new ability that wants to come in. Fear is great. It calls for new abilities. Take courage.

In the next post I am going to give more examples of fear and how to find the positive opposites which will be useful when dealing with other negative emotions as well. Remember that each negative emotion has its own code.

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Posted on November 15, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Using Your Negative Emotions as Code for your Personal Transformation

I am sitting at the top of run looking down when my body decides to fill itself up with fear of crashing badly. The longer I stay the worse it gets. The fear goes from mild reluctance to absolute paralysis. I know that I am going to ski down the slope. I am just looking for some courage to let go and start my way down.

You can think of negative emotions as a code for unlocking new parts of your higher self. The goal is not to get rid of them necessarily. When the new energy that is higher comes in, they go away almost by themselves. Think of them as your friends that are giving you an uncomfortable nudge to new development. For instance anxiety is almost always trying to take you to a place of confidence where you remember the positive things you can do, hold the memory, and then act with positive energy.

What are you feeling? Where do you think it is taking your higher self to? Courage, confidence, determination, honesty, patience, love, friendliness, compassion, generosity, gratitude, endurance, calm, serenity, enthusiasm, joy.

Let go of the idea that a negative emotion is something you have to fight or do battle with. Think about it as a message that comes to you in code. All you need to do is to process the code. You can journal, meditate, work with a friend, work with a counselor, or work with a group.

Wouldn’t today be a good day to process?

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to give a crash course on this blog about each one of the negative emotions. and what they are generally leading us to. I use 12 of them, but other people use more or have different names.

Fear, Shame, Embarrassment, Anger, Frustration, Guilt, Jealous, Envy, Hurt, Anxiety, Disappointment, and Grief. Where do they take us? Stay tuned to find out. They are not the enemy!!!

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Posted on October 31, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Dreams About Nuclear War: What is the Upside?

A couple of nights ago I found myself in place where I was running and hiding after there had been some kind of nuclear attack. I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. You cannot run from a real like nuclear attack. You are just dead pretty instantly. Lots of people, if they would write to me to ask me about the dream would wonder if a real nuclear attack is coming. I always tell people that I do not have the power to predict the future. What I do have the power of is to tell people what the message is about their pasts, and then how they can begin to approach their future. In this dream, about being nuked, it doesn’t tell me that a nuclear explosion is going to happen. It tells me that I have already been nuked.

What does that mean? It means that I have been obliterated in some fashion in the past where things suddenly came to a halt. When I did the inner after the dream, I found that I was nuked three times. A lot of people will tell you that the big traumas in life happen early, but my experience was that between the ages of 50-60 is when I faced the worst traumas of obliteration. One day I was working really positively toward positive ends, and then the next day I was gone. PUFF! Nuclear Annihilation. Fired.

What was so revelatory to me in this dream was what it was trying to wake up in me. If you have read anything that I have written over the past two decades, you know that the purpose of negative dreams, negative emotions, is to awaken new positive abilities. These positive abilities are exactly the opposite to the negative only in a positive direction. So I thought and thought and then meditated some more and finally the answer came to me. The opposite of being nuked, which is a hugely destructive force whose purpose it is to stop people, is the able to explode with positive energy. Imagine having the ability to explode with positive energy. I had never even considered it before, but there it was right in the middle of a hugely negative dream like a nightmare.

Some of our world leaders and religious leaders and corporate leaders love to nuke people. They get off with having explosions of negative energy like it is an addiction, but imagine large groups of people who can explode with hugely positive energy. Imagine yourself exploding with positive energy! Can you feel it? It is coming! The positive explosion era is coming. When this happens, all of the negative energy will go back on the negative leaders who have so much power. They will be nuked because they cannot abide the positive energy of such intensity.

Step One: Imagine yourself bursting with positive energy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Posted on September 26, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Positive Dream About Helping Others Change

Last night I dreamed that a young woman wanted to meet with me about transforming her life, and others also wanted to talk to me. I realized that being able to make internal changes, changes everything about how management is carried out. It is such a threat to past styles.

Before I learned how to do internal transformation work to help people make the changes that they wanted to make in themselves, I was never a threat to the old guard, to the old way of doing things. I was an annoyance because of my creativity, but not a threat. After I was trained and discovered how to assist people in their inner change work, I was fired by management in all my jobs on 3 different continents. The people I worked with always gave me glowing evaluations, but the management consistently attacked me.

You cannot control people in the same old ways if they have control over the inner landscape of their lives. As long as people are incapable of making changes the authoritarian ways will be secure and lasting, but as the ability to have control over the internal space grows,so also are old authoritarian ways crumbling.

To authoritarian leaders keeping people in a state of fear is essential to enacting what they want to have happen. When people learn how to overcome fear and go their own ways, authoritarian leaders essentially have no more authority. When the people who were formerly on the bottom, have the power of changing their own lives, they can simply choose not to be a part of the authoritarian schemes. It seems to me that the Baby Boomer generation first opened the doors to change, but they got stuck in looking for strong leaders. Generation X, people in their mid 40s, early 50s, was the first group to stop looking for the central authority or the one big star to make things work.

The days of a super CEO or a super governmental leader, or a big star for a team to do well, are dying if not totally dead. The best leadership for the coming era, now that people are learning how to control internal environments, will be based on cooperation with others. The one big star mentality that will save us still has a bit of air, but the rising style is more team oriented that encourages internal change.

Those of us who were discovering the dynamics of internal change suffered a lot in the past decades at the hands of self-interested leadership, but the small price we have paid for the longer term has been well worth it. The new doors are flying open. Change is accelerating.

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Posted on September 19, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Dreams of Intruders

Last night in my dream there was a female intruder trying to attack us. I asked myself who was she in real life and how did she affect me. The answer that came was that she was a former supervisor who fired me. The experience in real life with her made my ego brain really attend to all possibilities of intruders like her.

Intruders in real life come in two forms. There are the type of intruders who have a lot of power and authority. When they come with their jealous leadership style, they make you stop a lot of activities that you would love to be doing. If you live in a house with dictatorial parents or work in a job with a dictator for a leader or in a country with a brutal dictator, then it is difficult to take initiative and make positive things happen.

Another type of intruder is that one who comes in and takes things like a thief in the night. They are not necessarily vicious or power hungry. They come into your life, try to get your love, money, time, resources, and whatever else they can without regard to you and what your needs are.

To deal with this first type of intruder, the main thing you need is a lot of wisdom. It is not like you completely stop everything. It is that you need to have a lot of wisdom so that you can continue doing positive things without getting stopped. It is when you get a lot of attention and notoriety for what you are doing that you get in trouble with this type of intruder. If you go into places where no one wants to be, then they will not bother you. For instance, in the first part of my career I worked with severely disabled students. Administrators were just happy to leave us who worked in this alone. Also when I worked in physical education in schools especially with younger children, then admin were not the least bit involved. When I was involved in science, I was always in trouble.

The second type of intruder requires boundaries almost like putting a lock on the door. It is not out of cruelty or unkindness that you boundaries are required. It is because you cannot get to the important work if you let in people who are just takers. It wastes lots of time and energy. They are energy thieves. When they have boundaries put on them, then they have the chance to develop their own selves in positive ways.

There is a third type of intrusion and that is the intrusion of negative thoughts when you want to be positive. They can be pretty insistent. I always think that the first step is to be aware of when and how they enter. Once I know when they are likely to enter, then I can have positive thoughts that will replace them. It is like your own ego intrudes in your own process and then tells you to watch out and be protective all the time. It keeps you from visualizing very positive ends and then feeling them as if they are positive.

The goal is to release the intruders and then be able to visualize extremely positive ends and go for them.

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Posted on August 28, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Last Night I Was Yelling for Help in My Dream

The strangest thing happened last night in my dreams. Evidently I was yelling and screaming for help in my dreams so much so that my wife had to leave the bed for awhile because she thought I might be kicking her unconsciously which I have been known to do. What was interesting is that I had no memory of it happened. I woke up fairly normally and pretty positively. So what was going on there? It is an interesting question.

Here are my thoughts. Maybe you have some too or have had similar dreams. Feel free to share them. I am yelling for help in the dream world which means that I have fear of something bad happening, but then it doesn’t enter my memory. To me that makes me think that it is a fear that I am trying to bury, keep hidden so that others do not find out about it. It is like I have to put on a brave face to the world, and not allow others to see that there is some kind of terror inside.

I am going to go inside now and ask what the fear is that is trying to be buried from the outside world. Note: This is just like doing a meditation. You quiet yourself, relax, breathe, sit with patience, and ask the question.

The fear says that it is afraid of being locked up in a prison-like place with all kinds of restrictions placed on it like when I was in a military academy.

The next question is how does the fear act in behavioral terms? The fear acts by hiding away almost like being in prison.

It says that every time that I tried to break out of the restrictions and act more freely, then the leadership made the prison stricter, that the leadership needed absolute control and was fearful of people acting with creativity and initiative to do innovative things.

The next question is whether or not the fear is still relevant. The answer is no, but the fear doesn’t want to let go.

The problem obviously with holding onto the fear. is that, while it keeps me protected, it also keeps what I want to do hidden. It is trying to keep me safe, but I am not getting to where I want to go. I need to be free and unshackled with the creative and other pursuits.

Next Question: If I were free and unshackled and could put my stuff out there easily, what would that look like and feel like? It feels like a gazelle, leaping and running swiftly in positive directions.

What is your unconscious fear?

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Posted on August 23, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Grief: A Personal Journey into Loss

My father lived to be 100. He passed away peacefully in November 2021. He died pretty much in the same manner that he lived. He had very little drama, was cheerful, and found positive in those around him. My mother died in April of 2018. There was much more drama and pain in her passing as there had been in her life. By the time my father died all of his age peers including his younger brother had all been gone for some time. He was last man standing in his generation. In a way we were all happy that he could transition to his next journey. Everyone liked my dad. He was friendly, interested in you, and had very few if any enemies. I don’t remember experiencing a lot of grief over his passing, nor my mother’s. My relationship with my mother was complicated, but the love we had for each other was never in doubt.

My daughter, Erika, didn’t make it to 46. She was less than half the age of my father when she died of a progressive un-diagnosed brain disease in January, 2022. She was loved and very close to every family member, had friends from all over the world, had a brilliant mind and a loving spirit. Her healing abilities were many. Losing her has been a much different experience than losing my mom and dad. She left too early in the wrong order. I had lost my mentor, Dan Jordan, in October, 1982, when I was only 32 just trying to make my way in my career. It was painful, untimely, and changed the direction of my career, but losing Erika has been quite another thing.

Erika’s passing, though nearly 20 months ago, is still so very fresh. My grief is like a constant companion. It follows me around as if it is my shadow reminding me when I start to get up about life again, that it is still around. I have heard people describe this kind of grief as being messy and long and not able to be charted. It seems right. The first year was pure pain, even physical in nature. I was not capable of much intention even though I wanted to do more. When I had lost jobs in the past (3 different times on 3 different continents in difficult circumstances), I could take to long distance running as a way to dissipate the negative energy. Running was my healing spa. I could get lost on a trail and not care about getting back home or getting lost. Running was a salve to my wounded ego.

When Erika left us for her own journey into other realms, running also left me. I could at times, hike, and walk, but the loss and pain ran too deep. My body couldn’t do it. I would make starts at running, do one or two days, and then a few weeks would pass before I could do another one. Whatever kind of loss the other losses were, this was in another whole league. There is no use describing it in words, though that is what I am doing here on this page. I am comforted in my belief that there are worlds of God beyond this physical one, that life continues. I often feel her presence, but there is nothing quite like this kind of loss.

I can tell you quite clearly what the message of loss is from my years of dealing with negative emotions. Grief (loss) comes to us so that we can get back up again and maintain positive energy toward worthwhile goals. It was easier when I was fired from jobs. I could train long hours to do a marathon get to the finish line and hear the words, “I am still standing.” So, I get it that I am supposed to get back up again and be energetically involved in worthwhile pursuits. But this time it is really hard.

There is a tendency to ask, “Why me, Lord?” in this kind of circumstance. I don’t think I will go there. Why is never a very useful question. I much prefer “how” as a question. How does one get back up, being fully engaged in meaningful projects?

The important lesson here in writing about this for me is to not give a lot of textbook answers. Grief is messy and we all know it, but God seems to love the quality of resilience. It seems to be one of those virtues that are the most honored. You are down on the mat after getting punched really hard and have to decide if you are ever going to get back up again. I thought I had learned the quality of resilience after having been fired on three continents and losing my mentor too early, but this one was a whole different kind of match. The lights went out.

I am still on the mat after having been punched, my head is now lifted up, and I am trying to stand, but a big part of me wants to stay in the ring and not get up again. I have faith that the day of standing and getting back in the fight is coming. It is just slow, ever so slow.

Would love to hear your stories of resilience in the comment section.

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Posted on June 28, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

More on Anger: The Angry Smoker

I wrote this story to illustrate some of the challenges that anger as a negative emotion presents us. It is a true story with a few embellishments for the reader’s enjoyment.

It is a beautifully calm evening at Trout Lake in East Van, the name locals give to this part of the city of Vancouver. The sun is setting into a mixture of yellowish, nearly orange hues with barely a ripple on the water. The dogs are delighted as they are every time their scent-sensitive noses are stimulated by rushes of curiosity at every new tree and bush. Molly could easily do 10 turns around the 1 km path and never be bored. It is a dog’s paradise. Debby and Richard love the evening stroll, one they have done regularly for the past eight years since returning from their sojourns overseas.

“What a great city we live in to have this in our backyard!” Richard says as they approach where they normally sit to take in the evening’s bouquet of colors.

But on this evening something different is about to happen. As they near the view Richard begins to feel agitated. A sudden rush of disgust erupts in his being as he walks by a young man seated near the place that he and Debby often park themselves to take in the scene.

“Did it have to happen on this night?” “Did he have to invade our space with his noxious habit?”

Richard lashes out. ” Do you know that is against the law to smoke in a park in Vancouver?”

The young man, maybe 20, but just, tries to retort, but he has no intelligible response. He stays fixed in his place, continues his smoking for a few minutes, and then sneaks away. Richard stays fixed on his high horse, pulls out his cell phone to look up the city by-laws so that he can feel justified in his lashing out as if he were the savior of Vancouver’s pure air.

THREE WEEK FORWARD IN TIME

Back at Trout, back with Molly, making a turn around Trout Lake on a beautiful Sunday evening. On this evening the smoker appears early, a 40-something male, laying on his back with his half-smoked cigarette. Richard’s self righteousness raises up again. He is ready to strike one more time, The Righteous Upholder of Vancouver Law. Then he gets a light tap on his shoulder from an unexpected source. His eldest granddaughter, Isa, joins him along with a few others on the walk.

Richard confides in Isa about his disdain for the park smokers half-expecting her to join in his crusade against the foul vapors. To his unexpected surprise Isa grabs hold of the conversation, wrestles it away from the indignant one, and boldly takes it on the road less traveled.

“So Grandpa, what is the big deal with you and smokers?” “Why does it upset you so much?”

It is as if a boxer has sucker-punched him when he expected an agreement.

“What are you feeling?” she adds.

“Oh no!” Richard thinks to himself. “Don’t go there with the F-word? FEELING!!”

But Richard succumbs having been blind-sided and a little dazed. He relates to her about his anger, a feeling she obviously doesn’t share. She remains calm, detached, and curious. It completely disarms him. Has he ventured down the rabbit hole of his own darkness? He has.

One question follows another from the intrepid g-daughter. She has him on the ropes ready to deliver the knock out punch. The punch lands in the form of another question of when the first time was that he felt this anger. The self righteous crusader falls to the mat. The match is over. He is down for the count.

Richard realizes that he is/was the smoker. He smoked nearly 50 years ago to give himself breathing space at a time when he felt he had none.

Suddenly compassion enters his being. He no longer has disgust for the smokers, only compassion, the same compassion he needed for himself. They have what he has, not enough breathing space, not enough air.

Time to find breathing room.

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Posted on June 24, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

When Anger Strikes, Think About the Virtue of Patience

Anger is one of the less understood virtues, especially in places like America where the culture is run on how fast you can get to a goal or get something done or delivered. It is even worse in cultures like the Middle East where men think they own their families and have the innate right to do as they please. It is amazing when I cross over the border into the U.S. how many times people will apologize at a store or a restaurant if I have to stand in a line or wait for a coffee more than a “minute”.

Anger is an ego-driven negative emotion that some executives or people who are trying to maintain domineering relationships believe is a virtue. When an executive uses aggressive anger, it actually shows their absolute incompetence because they are just resorting to a tactic that subordinates give into because of the fear of being fired. If they do not have the big stick of being able to fire people, then anger is just a big bag of wind that does nothing. That people anger so easily is demonstration of understanding and valuing virtues like peacefulness or patience.

Anger= the Lack of Patience

What is patience? Patience is the virtue that allows you to take time out of the equation of what you are trying to achieve. When time is a big factor, too big of a factor, then anger is always present and so is the lack of patience. What people do not realize, which is the purpose of this post, is that patience is so magical. When you practice it, the thing that you were fretting about comes to you so easily. I do not know why it is undervalued in psyschological literature or self-help books. It is just never one of the 5 or 6 things to success in success-driven books. It is absent. Maybe that is why I stopped reading all of those numbered formula driven books. They always leave out patience.

Patience allows you to escape time. When you have it, time disappears. Some animals have it by nature. A green viper will sit on the same branch of a tree or bush for a week at a time waiting for its prey to cross its path. The signalling emotion that lets you know that you do not have enough patience is anger. Anger increases blood flow so that you will act more quickly in an aggressive manner, but even though at times it gets temporarily good results, long term it destroys relationships and the quality of what is being produced.

It is hard to imagine a culture or situation where time is not a part of the equation because our physical beings live in a time and space-filled world. The quickest way to develop patience is to think of spaces in your life where time seems to fade or does not even exist for you. I know a lot of gardeners who go out to the garden to take a look at how things are doing in the morning and then find themselves back in the house an hour or so later. They lose time in the wonder of the garden. Time ceases to be a big factor.

When you lose your patience with someone because they are blocking you from getting to what you want to do or where you are headed, anger is not going to get you to the inner experience that you are truly looking for. Anger takes you away from the inner experience. It is like you want to see the beauty of nature along a scenic path, but anger drives you over the cliff. You end up an infinite distance away from the wonder. Patience allows you to feel the texture of your brush strokes, the sweet vibrations of the chords, the beautiful fragrance of the flowers. It allows you to drink in life fully. In terms of positive abilities and being able to get to your goals and objectives in life, you have to think of patience as one of the top 5. It will work when every other virtue fails.

Why do we value courage, assertiveness, love, kindness, even mindfulness, and determination, not mention generosity and gratitude, but patience is nowhere to be found? I guess corporate leaders have not made the connection between patience and profit yet.

The Baha’i Writings calls patience under the trials of life a sign of love. Isn’t that interesting that patience is associated closely with love.

If you get that anger is the indicator that you need patience, and patience allows you to be in the garden a lot longer, maybe its time we all think about it more. What if you were patient when someone cuts you off in traffic? What if you were patient when the lines are long? It seems like it is a door opener to much more love and joy.

Try it. See how much more comes to you when you practice patience.

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Posted on April 30, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

What My Dream About Putin Taught Me

Last night I dreamt that the leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was holding the world hostage with big negative weapons, and that I was in the middle of it all being threatened and used by him in an attempt to get what he wanted. All I could think about was that we had to find a way to rid the world of his scourge. I also had a dream where I went from moments of closeness with others to being in the house of a really negative relative that I somehow had to appease. As soon I did that, I lost the closeness.

Why did I have these dreams? There were a couple more, which I lost memory of.

My inner being was being shown that I have a tendency to focus on getting rid of the negative in the world, rather than focusing on getting to a very positive end. I have a fear, like so many others do, that someone like Putin is going to ruin things for me. Then I focus on what I can do to get rid of the Putins (negative figures) and lose total focus on what the positive goals are. I get tense in the body and then it drains me. I wish I didn’t have to admit to this. I wish that by now in my life I would be more focused on positive ends, but there it was clear as day in my dreams. Putin is alive and well in my consciousness. I don’t even read or watch news more than a few glances here and there, but still he is present.

What to do?

First I need to realize that getting rid of the negative in my life is a losing strategy. The winning strategy is to visualize the positive end that I am trying to go for, which is to help people move their lives forward, relax, and then do a lot of action towards that end. Detaching from getting rid of Putin is no easy matter. The process is to ignore him, see the positive end. I can see people getting along together in the world and move toward it, or I can see everything being destroyed and then tense and be paralyzed. I often do the latter. The fear paralyzes and it is sustained by a negative vision of the future based on negatives in the past. Ignore the negative. Focus on the Positive End.

What can I do today that makes the world a better place? How can I get closer to others?

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Posted on April 24, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

True Identity

Recently my granddaughter asked me his question.

“I have been given the homework assignment to ask several people what they know about, how they would describe/what are characteristics of human nature/ identity?”

Here is what I responded to her.

True identity is based on one’s virtues. All of who you truly are is in the invisible realm like courage, trustworthiness, generosity, love, compassion, etc.. Since people are dual-natured, that is, they are a spiritual being in a physical body, most people identify themselves at least partially in a physical way. The core of identity is spiritual because, even something as clearly definable as whether you are male or female, goes away when you leave your body and go onto the next world. It is always best only to ever think of identity in spiritual/process terms. Also people have a tendency to identify themselves according to their ego such as their fears. “I am ADD,ADHD.” We are not our egos. We are our true selves. When we believe that we are our egos or our physical things, then we act out of them, such as acting out of fear or anxiety and preventing ourselves from really getting into things fully.

Human nature is completely positive. The egos play a big part of life, but they are not who you are. They are temporary, but a lot of people, because of scientists and doctors, e.g., tell you that you are your ego.

When you are given a negative label or a disorder, you can immediately dismiss it as a part of who you are even when certain people want you to wear or keep that label. Negative labels are not helpful and they are not who you are. You are all positive.

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Posted on February 20, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Grief is the Doorway to Empowerment

I have stated this theme many times in the past, but it is worth repeating again because the culture gives such a different message. Negative emotions, even though they feel negative, are actually only doorways to higher levels of positive energy. The culture wages war against negative emotions so that they will go away. It is why so much prescription medication is given when a negative emotion appears. If you feel down, reach for a pill, feel up again, repeat endlessly. I am sure I could get into some kind of trouble about going against prescription medication. It has its place, but it isn’t the be all and end all. Trying to make negative emotions the enemy and then get rid of them in anyway possible is the root of the drug crisis. What I have learned over many years of dealing with negative emotions in myself and others is that if they can just be seen as communication, as messengers that something needs to change inside, then they do not have to be seen as an enemy, but can be viewed in a more friendly manner. Mind you, when you are scared out of your tree from a nightmare, or have runaway anxiety, or are really depressed, they really do seem like the enemy. They are not. They are there to tell you that something needs to change, something new needs to develop inside of you. It is a lot easier to take this view of negative emotions as friends if you believe that growth is an eternal process that we continue our whole lives and beyond. Negative emotions just tell you where you are stuck, what needs changing.

One of the most difficult messengers to deal with is the negative emotion of grief primarily because it takes your energy levels really down into depressed states. What is the purpose of grief? Grief tells you that you have suffered is some kind of loss which is often quite obvious like the death of a loved one, the loss of physical capacity, being fired from your employment, or failing an important exam. Grief holds the memory of the loss partly because you have to realize that the game is over. If you don’t accept that the current situation is over, then you cannot move onto to a more empowered state. It can last for a long, long time. The first time I got fired from a job,I was left me in such a down state. I held the memory of the loss so closely. It was very shocking to me what happened. What I have learned over the years in dealing with grief, especially after having been fired on three different continents, is that when you are in the grief state, your ego mind does not want to remember the positive abilities that you have. It wants to hold the loss by making it intensely felt so that you will not get back into the game again in another position somewhere else. It keeps the memory of the loss alive in your mind so that you will not doing anything “stupid” like finding another job where you might get fired again.

The first step in becoming empowered after loss is to realize that the message of the loss is that you have some incredible abilities that have already been developed whose memory you need to reactivate. When you can remember your abilities in an enhanced manner, then it gives you a lot of empowerment to do what you do best already. The struggle is to let go of memory of the loss, which is your ego protecting you from bad happening again. There is actually no such a thing as an assured protection from loss. There is no internal insurance policy that you can get to keep it from happening again. It is going to happen to all of us. You cannot prevent it, especially is you live a life on the cutting edge where people are entrenched in old ways. Letting go of the idea that you can protect against loss allows you to understand that empowerment is the virtue you need, to keep getting back up, and keep getting back in the game. It is easy to give in and then take an antidepressant. Remembering what you are good at already and then doing it all over again in a new place or situation is the message of grief. This is what it is trying to do.

But it also has another trick of its sleeve, which most people do not know. When you hold the memory of the loss strongly so that you don’t have to get back in the game, then it also imagines some kind of false hope so that you do not have to deal with being more empowered. The false hope really is an attachment to a possibility that is never going to happen. In the third world, for instance, the people that fire you are often corruptly in “bed” with the people you can appeal to. You can hope that something bad is going to happen to the people who wrongfully dismissed you, but is going to go nowhere. There is no outward recourse. There is an inner recourse which changes everything. The inner recourse is to let go of the imagination, remember your positive strengths and then to feel really up or joyful about them. When you are up about what you already have, the empowerment gets fully energized like rocket fuel so that you can get to new heights.

Rather than go on and on about this which is a vast subject, I am going to write some simple steps in dealing with grief.

Recognize that when you are depressed it is usually about some kind of loss that you have suffered. Name the loss and when it occurred.
Say to yourself that the grief is holding the memory so that I can get to an empowered state, but first I have to let go of the protection from having losses again.
Make a list of your positive abilities and think of times when you used them positively.
Ask yourself what false hope you have about the loss that is hindering you from feeling up. Let go of the false imagination.
When you get to an empowered state, new opportunities will open.

Be patient with big losses like the loss of a close family member or friend. They take longer.

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Posted on February 5, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Some Thoughts On Disappointment

Today I was working internally with the negative emotion of disappointment. It is the feeling inside that lets you know that your expectations or goals are incorrect, but there is a process that you do that is working and needs to be continued. If you hold onto wrong expectations, you end up down and depressed, but if you hold onto the process that works and continue the process, it will produce a lot over the long term. For instance, you can be very inclusive and supportive, but work in an environment where the leadership is selfish and recognition-oriented. Expectations can easily go awry in such an environment because the leadership can act in ways that are destructive to positive outcomes. When you let go of the expectations of leadership to do positive things, then you can keep focusing and doing your own inclusive and supportive behaviors that will eventually lead to the downfall of the selfish leadership.

Disappointment and grief are closely related to each other because they both make you feel really down and take away a lot of your energy. The difference between the two is that grief tells you something is over, whereas disappointment tells you that despite the poor results, you are still in process or in the same arena. Grief wants you to remember all of the positive things you do, but makes you realize that there is a new playing field where you are going to apply what you can do. Disappointment tells you to stay where you are and keep doing the positive. If you get fired, for instance, from a company, then you are in loss, and have to find a new place, whereas if you have a major setback, it means you have to keep doing what works in an up manner despite the setbacks.

The problem with both energies is that they bring your physical energy down. The way to get back to up energy is to remember positive successes using your positive abilities and then acting on them.

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Posted on February 2, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Using Your Dreams to Understand Where You Have Been and Where You are Headed

Recently one of my good friends sent me this dream.

Last night I dreamed that you and I were running in this big race in some kind of beautiful national park with a whole lot of people. We were going along and I got forced into running through this kind of landslide area and I somehow got lost and found myself running on a super highway where a car went out of control and was skidding sideways right for me. It stopped just short of hitting me. I walked past the car wreckage and went to cross a big road but it had an arroyo pouring down it, so I had to go another way. I felt so far off track and lost and then I saw you. You were all sweaty and exhausted and really trying to get your breath. And then we were like,, “okay, let’s go”. We were both still in the race!!

What I love about this dream so much is that it can be applied to actual racing like actual running, and it can be applied to the big race you are in in life. This dream explains the process we all must go through on our true life path. In the first part of the dream, like the first part of the big race of life, you find yourself in beauty and awe. This is where you are totally enamored with what you are doing and feeling wonderment with each step.

Then, without notice, you are thrown into extremely difficult life tests and challenges. These tests develop all kinds of inner qualities like determination, resilience, problem-solving, trust, and faith. At times you want to give up because, like in the dream, you feel so far off track and alone. While the dream is a matter of minutes in sleep time, in real life what the dreamer is experiencing is years of being in challenges. The amazing thing about her is that she never gives up. She is slowed, but still remains faithful to her path.

When she sees me, who is equally exhausted, it is like the synergistic energy of two people being in the big race together, energizes us. We have been through the worst of it, but now we are back in the race with a lot more acquired abilities. It makes being successful so much easier.

No one ever really asks for these challenges that come to us. We would all prefer an easier road, at least one that didn’t have so many emotionally wrenching times, but when you are on the other end of them, together with a fellow traveler who has also experienced great challenges, the road ahead and the race is extremely bright.

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Posted on January 26, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Movement And Transformation Workshop March25 Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver, BC, Canada

https://www.facebook.com/events/721028939609693/?ref=newsfeed

Details of this workshop are on the link above. It is one that I have been looking forward to doing for a long time. Join in the fund.

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Posted on January 24, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

How Do You Deal with a Dream Where You are Very Attracted to Someone Else?

By far the category of dreams that I have read and answered the most over the years of doing dream work has been those that are related to being attracted to another often ending up in bed with the person. You can be happily married, but then one night you are having sex with your ex in a dream. Or if you are a heterosexual person, you might find yourself in bed with the same sex, or vice versa. Attraction in a dream or in real life is a tricky thing.

The most important piece of dream interpreting advice that I am going to give here is that whatever you experience in the dream world in terms of attraction to others should not be acted on in the real world. Do not do it! You are going to have learn to use the quality of self-discipline both in your dream life and in your daily real world life around the idea of attraction if you are ever going to truly grow as human being. When someone appears in your dream like an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend and your heart feels so attracted that you just want to contact them immediately and be with them, don’t do it. Here is why. The person that you are dreaming about is not the real person that you used to be attracted to. It is an image of attraction and they often show up to be much better in the dream world than they ever were in real life. This is because the dream world is trying to show what their inner positive energy is like strength or kindness or enthusiasm so that you will develop that energy in yourself. If you would act in the real world on the dream as if it meant that you should be with the person, then your life is going to end in a disaster. If you work on yourself to develop the qualities that are represented by them in the dream, then your life will completely work and get so much better.

Here is the basic law of attraction that material science or material culture has not learned. Attraction, who are what you are attracted to is very malleable. It is not fixed, just as your character is not fixed. Being stuck in the way you are attracted is deadly if you are attracted only physically.

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Posted on January 17, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Speaking about Nightmares

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Posted on January 12, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Dreams of Being Raped: How to Change the Nightmare

In some of my previous posts about New Year’s Resolutions I was trying to emphasize the importance of starting small with new habits and activities so that they can be maintained for a long period. This post is about a type of dream that dis-empowers action making you hide away in a small self.

Being raped in a dream is a metaphor for someone who has a lot of ego-materialistic power exercising it in a negative way on someone else. It is a huge fear of the defenseless in this world and the ultimate form of controlling others. When the fear of being raped is present in a dream, that person appears big in comparison to your own self, often more than one person. If you have had a dream where you were raped or being threatened to be raped, it means that someone has used negative power against in the past to render you helpless. It could be, but does not necessarily indicate that you have been physically violated. It means that negative power is a perceived threat in your mind, and when it is a perceived threat, it makes you feel small, controlled, and usually wanting to hide away. Indeed the purpose of a person using power in a negative manner is make others feel small so that they can feel big inside. Ultimately they are extremely small and undeveloped internally, but the use of power over others becomes an addiction.

The fear in the dream means that you are ready to develop the opposite quality that the dream is presenting. You are being called to start developing your own positive powers. The best way to think about it is that you are being called upon to develop your own empowerment to do things that better the world. What would your life be like if you had extremely positive power to better the world?

There are two things you have to assess in real life when dealing with this type of fear. First, what is the actual fear in your current outer life of a negative power harming you? If it is there and it is real, then proceeding forward with empowerment requires a huge amount of wisdom. If you have an oppressive work situation, for instance, any type of major empowerment on your part will be a perceived threat, and then action could be taken against you. It is important, in this kind of situation, you take measures to protect yourself and your family. If there is no perceived outer threat, then you can begin to let go of big fear feelings, and then start to see yourself with new positive abilities.

Usually the first capacity to want to be developed internally is the ability to connect closely with others, to see the positive in others, and to have a loving connection. This is because having social capital is one of the main requisites for getting anything truly positive done in the world. If you have positive connections with others, it is easy to get things done. People who use negative power have huge issues with closeness. It terrifies them. Social capital makes it easy.

The hard part about doing this kind of change is the ability to make the big bad wolf (bad person with negative power) into a little squeaky mouse, and then make yourself into a big positive force. The key is to test the waters with small actions like writing positive messages to friends or visiting someone who is ill so that they can feel cheered up.

Remember that being assaulted in a dream is a message to develop your empowerment.

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Posted on January 6, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

In Commemoration of the One Year Anniversary of My Daughter’s

When the time comes to make a change

What is the right method, when your soul feels a craving, a deep desire inside of you, to make a leap, take a jump into the wild unknown? The forest is overgrown and the path has disappeared. How do we find our way?

There is only one sure and true way, and that is go deep inside of you, into the place that most fears the change and ask yourself: What is my soul the most hungry for? What am I longing for? Craving for? What would I give myself if I had all of the time in the world, an endless supply of money and a never ending source of energy? What would I be doing right now with my life? What changes would I make?

When you can allow the quiet voice inside of you, your soul whispers, to begin to speak to you, you will find an endless amount of guidance that wants to pour out into your life. Your soul is hungry for change. It is hungry for moving you on to the right path. It desperately wants to tell you.

Let your heart open up to this new form of guidance and trust that whatever you hear and feel is exactly what you need to do. As you do this, your life will open up for you in endless ways and new possibilities will dance on your door step. The jungle path will light up and your true path home, to your self and your inner light, will glow with such brightness that it will instantly and completely heal those around with its brilliance.

Find your path, one whisper at a time.

https://www.erikahastings.com/post/when-the-time-comes-to-make-a-change

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Posted on January 2, 2023 by dreamsforpeace

Dreaming About the New Year: How to Make Resolutions that Work

If you want to have success with your New Year’s resolutions, the simple rule is to start by only making resolutions for one day at a time. If you want to exercise more, make a modest goal today and do it. Then tomorrow you will be really pumped because you achieved a resolution yesterday. The next day set another goal for that day. If you miss a day or get ill, just start again the next day or when you feel well. After a couple of months you will be able to set goals that go further into the future, but avoid being grandiose (thinking too big). Stay small like doing something for your neighbor. It is no use having a big vision if you are weak with small positive acts which most of us have a lot of avoidance about. Star SMALL.

This is a video of my son-in-law, my grandson, and I jumping into a pool that is about 5 C/40 F. Resolution: Do things I would never do!!!!

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Posted on December 19, 2022 by dreamsforpeace

The Magic of 5 to 1

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/use-the-magic-5-1-ratio-to-improve-all-your-relationships?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I have quoted this research in almost every talk I have ever given. It is extremely powerful. Have a read.

Dreams For Peace

Dream Interpretation, Therapy, Transformation

The Code of Jealousy: Getting Out of Extreme Protection and Guarding What You Think You Have

The Code of Envy: Killer of Relationships/Door to Intimacy

The Grief Code: Doorway to Endurance

The Code of Disappointment: Beware of Expectations.

The Code for Frustration: Right Goal-Wrong Process to Get There

The Code of Anger: Doorway to Tranquility, Patience, Detachment, Calm

The Code of Anxiety 2 Examples

The Anxiety Code: Moving Towards Confidence

Breaking the Code of Fear 2: Examples

Breaking the Code of Fear: Becoming More Courageous

Using Your Negative Emotions as Code for your Personal Transformation

Dreams About Nuclear War: What is the Upside?

Positive Dream About Helping Others Change

Dreams of Intruders

Last Night I Was Yelling for Help in My Dream

Grief: A Personal Journey into Loss

More on Anger: The Angry Smoker

When Anger Strikes, Think About the Virtue of Patience

What My Dream About Putin Taught Me

True Identity

Grief is the Doorway to Empowerment

Some Thoughts On Disappointment

Using Your Dreams to Understand Where You Have Been and Where You are Headed

Movement And Transformation Workshop March25 Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver, BC, Canada

How Do You Deal with a Dream Where You are Very Attracted to Someone Else?

Speaking about Nightmares

Dreams of Being Raped: How to Change the Nightmare

In Commemoration of the One Year Anniversary of My Daughter’s

When the time comes to make a change

Dreaming About the New Year: How to Make Resolutions that Work

The Magic of 5 to 1

Richard Hastings

Exciting New Ebooks Available Now!

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