Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Elephant Story

The Elephant Story


Have you ever seen an elephant, staked at a circus ground? 
Have you ever wondered how that stake holds such a huge, strong animal? 
Did you know that often, when it's time to move on, the handler tells the elephant to pull the stake, and the animal uses its trunk to pull the stake out of the ground itself !!

So, why doesn't the elephant just pull the stake out any old time he wants to go for a wander?

Because he's been taught that he can't - except for when the handler instructs him to. Isn't that Amazing, looking from our perspective? An animal that big, and that strong, is physically held in place - by a belief!

Now, we, on the outside of that elephant's experience, can see the Truth. The truth is that the elephant is perfectly capable of setting himself free whenever he wants to. But from inside his perspective, he doesn't know that. And his belief is that he is chained and unable to wander off.

If the elephant could speak and reason, he would insist that he has no choice. He would insist that he is unable to walk away. If we said to him, but you can just pull the stake out with your trunk, he would answer "I can't! I can't do that! My whole life this stake has held me here. I believe in this stake, I mean look - it's there! It's in the ground, and my foot is chained to it. You can see it with your own eyes. The handler used a hammer to knock it into the ground. It's obvious I can't just pull it out. It's always held me here!" and he would reason it out. He would defend that belief that he is trapped - because that is his reality.

Now, if the elephant was happy where he was, and his handler was kind to him, and he was well cared for, then we might just look at the situation, and find it interesting, and we wouldn't try and convince the elephant of what we know. And it wouldn't matter what the elephant believes because he's happy.

However....

If the elephant is unhappy, if he feels trapped, or if he is ill-treated, it would be very frustrating trying to convince him that he is capable of ending his suffering if he would only choose to change his belief.

Now the problem is, that there is no way this elephant can know the truth - he's been programmed to believe in the stake. And why should he trust us?

Let's say, another elephant actually did set himself free. And he tries to explain this to the trapped elephant. He says "I did it - it's absolutely possible! The stake is not keeping you trapped, your belief in it is!"

But the trapped elephant says, "But no-one knows that for sure!" The free elephant says, "Hey, that's true, and we'll never know for sure until we become human and we put the stakes in ourselves, but what I do know, is that when I changed my belief in the stake, I pulled it out with my trunk, and now I'm free!"

Then the other elephant has a choice - to find a way to change his beliefs ... or to continue believing in the stake. But the key word here is choice.

He either chooses to change or he chooses to remain the same. Either way he is making his own choice.

He may not know how to change his belief, but the minute he truly decides that he will change his belief.... all manner of information and tools come his way.

Maybe he starts to notice things he didn't before - like the fact that when his handler instructs him to pull the stake out of the ground to go to the water ... he may now become aware of how he does it, whereas before it was automatic. He may notice that when it's been raining and the ground is wet, the stake practically pulls itself out! He may begin to notice that his handler is too weak to push the broken down truck, and gets the elephant to do it - and this time, because of his awareness, he may begin to get a better idea of his own strength.... and so on.

Once he's chosen to change his beliefs, he begins to become open and to notice more.

But if he makes the choice to continue with his current belief just because he believes it at the moment, and because even though he hates his life, the belief makes sense to him... then he will be living in that perspective and he'll never become aware of all the bits of information that make the new belief make more sense.

Every single moment of human consciousness is a choice. You can start making the choices that make you feel good!

As Native people, what beliefs are we holding onto about ourselves, our communities, authority and our abilities that our history has placed on us?



A Class Divided - Jane Elliot

The Full Episode

Monday, March 3, 2014

One of my Favorite Quotes


“Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."- John F. Kennedy

The Subconscious Mind

95% of your actions, beliefs and feeling are automatically controlled by your subconscious mind!


Sunday, March 2, 2014

U.S.A. Boarding Schools


After the US Government took the children to the boarding schools, the parents moved as close as they were allowed to be near their children. It was heartbreaking…


Saturday, March 1, 2014

Develop Self-Awareness

Develop Self-Awareness and Improve Your Relationships


 “Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves.” – Gandhi


“Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."- John F. Kennedy


The other day I got upset over something silly that triggered difficult feelings with deep roots from my past. Someone I love made a reasonable request that for various reasons, I didn’t want to honor, partly because I felt my feelings weren't being taken into account. But I had no good reason to suspect this. I thought this because it was a pattern for me.

For most of my young life, I believed my needs wouldn’t be met if I didn’t push and fight for them. I saw everything as a battle—it was everyone else against me. Though I’ve learned to see others as on my side, and know that I’m on theirs, I still worry that people aren’t looking out for me at times.

In the aftermath of this recent disagreement, I talked through my feelings with my partner. I told her I understood my emotional response, and I knew where it came from—when I first recall feeling this way and why, and how it’s been a pattern in my life.

Then I posed a question: In recognizing where and how I learned this behavior, am I blaming people and circumstances from my past, or merely being self-aware? What, exactly, is the difference?

I think it’s an important question to ask, because we’ve all been wronged before.

We do ourselves a disservice if we sit around blaming other people for our maladaptive reactions and behaviors. We’re better able to change when we understand how we developed these responses in our former relationships and prior life events.

I’ve spent a lot of time learning to let go of victim stories, which is a big part of why I don’t write about some of the most painful events of my life. Still, for better or for worse, they shaped who I am.

When I allow myself to look back and acknowledge wrong-doing, I reinforce to myself that I did not deserve to be mistreated, and that it’s not my fault that I struggle in certain ways as a result. I know, however, that it is my responsibility to change my responses and behaviors. And that, right there, is the difference between self-awareness and self-victimization.
Self-awareness allows us to understand what’s going on in our heads—and why; Self-victimization prevents us from accepting that we’re responsible for our experience now—and for what we do with it as a result.

Expanding on this train of thought - self-victimization includes:
·       Dwelling and obsessing about the ways we feel we’ve been wronged.

Complaining about painful, seemingly unfair events without ever considering if and how we played a role in them.

 Using these events to justify negativity; bitterness; or selfish, hurtful, or irresponsible actions.

Feeding off other people’s sympathy and maybe even depending on it.

Telling sad stories from the past as a means of avoiding judgment or trying to win approval.

Believing that everything would be better if the world or other people would change.

As someone who’s done all of these things in the past, I can attest that this is often the result of immense pain. Sometimes we play the victim because we were victims. We learned that we didn’t have control, and then adapted to that. Because we once felt powerless, we learned to give our power away.

On the other side of the spectrum, self-empowerment includes:
       Consciously choosing to let go of victimizing thoughts.

 Considering that we may have played a part in some of the most painful events from our pasts.


Learning from these events how we can respond proactively to similar events in the future.

Feeding our own emotional needs instead of coming to other people with a void that won’t ever be filled.

Accepting responsibility for our actions, and the consequences of them.

Realizing things will only improve if we make a change, internally or externally.
 This requires self-awareness, which brings me back to my initial question:

“What does self-awareness look like; when it involves acknowledging pain from the past—and how does it differ from self-victimization?”


Self-awareness includes:

Understanding our emotions—what we’re feeling and what triggered it—so we can effectively work through and transform our emotional responses (instead of using them to justify unhealthy choices).

Recognizing our destructive thought patterns so we can redirect them.

Tuning into what’s going on in our bodies so we can learn from it and access our intuition.


Noticing our behavioral patterns and habits so that we can make adjustments to change negative ones.


Understanding our beliefs, assumptions, and expectations, and how they influence what we choose to do.


Accepting that we are responsible for our actions—even if we developed certain patterns in response to events from our past.

The fundamental difference between self-awareness and self-victimization, when it pertains to acknowledging we’ve been hurt: Self-awareness is about observing our response to what happened; self-victimization is about feeding into the story of what happened.



This isn’t always easy to do. Sometimes the mere act of remembering something painful can bring up all kinds of old feelings. It helps if we learn to immediately redirect our thoughts to a positive, empowering affirmation.

This means that next time I find myself questioning whether the other person really has my best interests at heart, when I have no reason to believe they don’t, I can tell myself something like this:


“I give people I love the benefit of the doubt. I release my instinctive emotional response from the deepest root cause and do my part to create happy relationships.”


In changing my thoughts, I can change my feelings, and then effectively redirect my actions.
This process can apply to all kinds of unhealthy relationship patterns that stem from former relationships, but it requires us to work at developing self-awareness.

One way we can do this is by journal-ing about our feelings and triggers—if, for example, you tend to feel mistrusting, or defensive, or angry when specific events occur—and then come up with affirmations to use when we get caught up in those patterns.

Some examples of situations and affirmations:


If you frequently mistrust someone, in large part because someone else formerly abused your trust, you could use this affirmation when those old feelings arise:
  
  “This is a new relationship. I release my instinctive emotional response from the deepest root cause, and accept that I can change it and improve my relationship by trusting.”

If you frequently feel guilty in your relationship, in large part because you were emotionally abused in the past, you could use this affirmation when those old feelings arise (assuming you’re in a healthy relationship now):

·       “I choose not to blame myself. I release my instinctive emotional response from the deepest root cause, and free myself from shame and self-judgment.”

Whatever the pattern, we can challenge it and eventually change it by changing our thoughts and beliefs.


If we’re willing to be self-aware, we can empower ourselves, and transform our relationships and our lives in the process.