Turning Points TM
I have always been curious about what we remember and didn’t remember from our formative years and why. As I look back on my life I am able to clearly see what I term as turning points. These are the specific events that created a disturbance to flow in my life. These are also known as precipitating events and as such are the keys to the awareness of what separates us from wholeness; what holds us back, and/or what has propelled us forward often in directions we did not consciously choose.
Moving six times in nine years certainly caused a major shift from the birthright of knowing everything is ok and living in trust and wonder to feeling that some aspects of life and people could not be trusted. Having a near death drowning experience at age six while at a backyard barbeque and summer swim in the swimming hole further caused an element of distrust and feeling of lack of safety. This was complicated by the awareness that neither of my parents or any of the other adults in attendance had a clue of what happened.
Essentially I had found myself over my head in deep water and had gone under several times–I remember hearing beautiful music and letting go and in the next moment it felt as if some force of nature had propelled me to shallower water and safety. As I emerged from the water and became aware that no one knew what happened to me, I interpreted this experience as one in which I did not matter. This caused me to activate all kinds of ways of being to insulate myself from this story. I was very angry with my parents over this and their apparent cluelessness and did not really understand why until I revisited what this particular event meant to me as a six year old.
The habits, thoughts, beliefs, interpretations and patterns that became the framework of my life were reinforced by the various experiences I had at a young age. Under all of these stories and interpretations lay one foundational fear, the fear of change. Fear of change is at the core of many of our deepest challenges. It is likely that fear of change is operational in you and your clients as it was in me.
There have been many other defining moments in my life where I have made choices and decisions based on the messages I have received or the stories and interpretations I made up about the events. Thankfully, they no longer fuel my life. What are the turning points of your life?
What are the memories from your past that return to your awareness for an occasional visit? These are the ones that often hold the keys to the interpretations that are made from a different viewpoint. These are often the clues to the awareness needed to shift a way of being.
When we talk about awareness it is useful to make a distinction between the two aspects of awareness. One is being present to what is and choosing consciously to operate from that awareness. This is the capacity required to recognize turning points. The other is pure awareness. Pure awareness is often referred to as the background or the gap between thoughts. I like to think of it as the space before a thought. Just as there are spaces between and before the words on this page there is a space before the next thought.
Various meditation techniques will take you to this place and give you the experience of pure awareness. It is through the experience of pure awareness that you develop a sense of oneness and unity. This sense will further expand to a knowingness of oneness and unity as you erase the energy patterns that cause the illusion of separation. Thoughts occur on the background of pure awareness. Imagine a blue sky with scattered clouds; the clouds are like your thoughts and appear on the background of the sky. Just as the words you are reading occur on the background of this page.
We human beings are the local representation of the non local field, cells in the body of god, extensions of all that is. Our DNA provides the cellular memory in which the events, memories and fears of our life are recorded. It is these energy patterns that cause our behaviors and trigger our reactions.
When we become aware of these patterns we begin to learn to shift the energies. Mastery of this capacity causes us to operate from the State of Being™ we call wholeness. In this state of being, the layer of our DNA that is in direct connection and communication with source becomes the place from which we operate. The energy patterns of the past are shifted and we are free to live BIG in the mastery of WHO WE REALLY ARE!