Firing Good Actors in a Bad Script!
Some of us tend to beat ourselves up entirely too much, and then wonder why we struggle with our self–worth. Sometimes, we do not let ourselves win because we do not believe we can.
Guilt and shame are really the two culprits in the inability to forgive ourselves. In other words, if we are feeling guilty or ashamed, we need to go within and find out why so we can return to our inner nature – where we can be innocent and accepted.
There are many things that happen in our lives that can bring us into and add to the layer of guilt and shame that we learned during our formative years. You may enter into relationship
and feel you are letting the other person down. Or maybe you feel you aren’t doing your best
at your job, or you are afraid to move forward for fear of failing. Many of these feelings stem
from the programming we received as children.
Guilt and shame can be extremely debilitating and much of it is unconscious. It’s your Bubble Talk. It’s like the thought bubbles that appear over the cartoon characters’ heads. These unconscious thoughts are what keep you from getting what you want in life. You may be doing amazing affirmations or consciously thinking about your heart’s desires, and then confused by why it isn’t appearing or appearing fast enough. It’s that little bubble you are unaware of; those unconscious thoughts saying “I’m not good enough” or “I always fail” that do not align with our conscious thoughts and keep us spinning our wheels which in turn keeps us from moving forward.
I like to use the analogy of the gas and the brake pedals on your car. The gas is your desire;
what you want; what you dream about. If you are driving your car and it wants to go somewhere and you put your foot on the gas, off you go. You move forward towards that goal or desire. The brake is your resistance. Your belief that you can’t have what you want. The fear that you will fail. Often, people drive around with their foot on both the gas and the brake at the same time. Obviously, you won’t get very far. You’ll be stuck spinning your wheels wondering why you aren’t getting anywhere.
What many of us do when we realize we are stuck is let go of the gas because we all know how to let go of what we want. We all know how to settle and just say, “never mind, that wasn’t for us; it wasn’t meant to be”. So we let go of the gas, even though there is a way to recognize and let go of the brake, that resistance; and that is to let go of our guilt, fear and shame about ourselves. All of these things can keep our brake on and unconsciously keep us stuck even with our foot on the gas. With the tools I’m going to share, you’ll be able to release the brake, let go of resistance and find yourself going 100 mph towards your goals and desires in no time.
The mystic teacher Babaji says “We are all actors in our own scripts. We are the writer,
director, producer and the lead character for your script. Everyone else plays in your creation exactly as you direct them to”. We are all actors for each other, but this can apply to ourselves as well. We have a little actor in our heads saying, “this is how I’m supposed to perform. This is what I’m supposed to do in my life. I should have XYZ by this age” We should do this and we’re supposed to do that.
Now, all of these “supposed to’s” and “should’ves”, come from outside influences beginning when we were very young. Our parents, grandparents, teachers, culture, TV and religion all bombarded us from birth saying, “Here’s how you’re supposed to act. Here’s what you’re supposed to want.
Here’s how you’re supposed to be.” So if you think that you’ll be poor and robbed and cheated, an actor will show up and oblige you because you’re the director and the producer. If you think you’re ill and you’re not good enough, then you will attract disease because your body has to act out your script. Or, an actor will come along and beat you up or use you because your script says you’re not good enough. These scripts are coming from an unconscious belief that you may have about yourself and you don’t even know you have it.
If you recognize that these people that you hold grudges against, including yourself, are actors in your own creation, then it’s really easy to forgive them and yourself. In the past when you’ve forgiven someone, you may have said “Hey you’ve done wrong to me.” Or maybe you point the finger at yourself and beat yourself up so much that you self–sabotage. In reality what you might be saying to yourself is, “I want you to know that I don’t want to hold a grudge, so I’m going to try and forget that horrible thing you did.” Such a thought affirms an illusion. It gives power to a mistake that anybody could do harm to you or you could do harm to yourself without some form of unconscious consent.
Now is the time to find each of these characters and forgive them in your life. Just as
importantly, it may be time to fire some of them from your movie & attract new actors with a new script.
Rewrite the Script.
Let us look at how well we have written the script for ourselves. Obviously, we don’t walk around saying “Gee I’m going to sabotage myself today. I’m going to set myself up for failure so I can feel guilty and ashamed”. However, there is some kind of an unconscious or subconscious belief about ourselves that we keep adding onto these layers of guilt and shame that just feel more cumbersome as the years go by. Sometimes you need to look at the script of your “movie” and decide it needs better dialogue!
When we say, “I don’t want to hold a grudge so I’m going to try and forget”, that’s not really
forgiveness. A better way is, “You know, I’ve made a mistake in my thinking to allow another
person including myself to seemingly hurt me. I recognize that that person is merely doing
what I invited them to do or I’m merely doing what I unconsciously believed about myself.
Neither that person, myself, nor anybody, can hurt me. I’m perfect now, always have been and always will be.”
A great affirmation to say to yourself or someone you’ve perceived to have hurt you is “I send you love from my heart _____. I’m sending you love from my heart and I forgive you knowing it is impossible for you to infringe on my perfection”.
Another cleansing, clearing thought would be, “You know what? I am perfect just the way I am and I have chosen to start setting myself up to believe that so I’m going to send love from my heart to myself and know that I am forgiven, because really there’s nothing to forgive”. That’s the ultimate in forgiveness work. The knowing that in reality there is nothing to forgive in the first place. In other words, we are creating actors to play the scripts we wrote for them and ourselves. Therefore, there is nothing to forgive because we are playing our parts perfectly.
That doesn’t mean that if you have hurt yourself or if someone has hurt you, that it is okay, nor does it mean that you must forget it. I know that people say forgive and forget, but it’s difficult to forget if you’re still holding on to the pain.
What this cleansing will help us do is to release that pain. Because many of us really want to punish the other person or punish ourselves. You have to be willing to give up the desire to punish. Punishing other people is like YOU taking poison and expecting THEM to die. It really hurts you; it doesn’t hurt them. The same is true for yourself. So, let’s learn how to write a new script in our own movie…
This is a simple exercise that you can do to help bring out better dialogue in your heart and your head. We are going to use stream of consciousness writing to write down a time in your life when you were really upset with yourself. It could be in relation to your job, relationship – something you feel you failed at and feel guilt and/or shame about. Don’t edit your answers, just write down the first thoughts that come up when you read the statement and finish it.
Answer the following six questions –
1. I’m upset at myself because…
2. The reason I’m not willing to forgive myself is…
3. My payoff for not forgiving myself is…
4. The lesson I’m learning from this is…
5. I’m most grateful for myself for…
6. What life would be like if I forgave myself…
The first three really get you in touch with what you are feeling and why you feel the way you do and the reason why you can’t forgive yourself and what your payoff is. What do you get out of it for not forgiving yourself? Do you get to stay stuck? Not deal with things? Do you get to be alone? Do you get to stay separate, so you aren’t hurt?
The last three move you out of that feeling place of shame and guilt to try and get you to a better place. You are on the road to taking responsibility for your thoughts, actions, and
beliefs. What lesson am I learning about myself and what am I most grateful for? Plenty of times we forget – why we should even like ourselves or much less love ourselves. After that, visualize what life would be like if you didn’t feel guilty or ashamed.
That’s the part that I really want you to focus on. What would life feel like? What would my life be like in relationships? In my job? My purpose? With my family? With my friends? What would life be like if I felt innocent and accepted myself for who I am?
Many times, we get stuck in those first three. We get caught up in what’s wrong with us. “Why didn’t I do something? I can’t get it right. I almost made it, but just can’t quite.” These are triggers for us that keep coming up like a trash compactor. We were these little tiny people with all of these outside influences pushing us down saying, “You’re not good enough, you can’t make it, you’ve got to work hard for your money, why can’t you be more like your brother and sister, money doesn’t grow on trees”. We start believing all of these sayings and feelings that bombarded us when we were little thinking, “Oh I guess that’s true. I guess I can’t get it right. I’d better not make a mistake. I’m going to get hurt.”
Then we start believing that’s who we really are, this trash compactor full of guilt and
shame. Maybe we’ve done a lot of release work on ourselves and let the pressure valve go
which may have cleaned out the trash compactor some and that’s great. But things will
continue to happen in our lives that trigger those same feelings we had. “There it is again – I thought I’d released that. I thought I let go of that already. I’m going to beat myself up some more and then beat myself up for beating myself up because I should have let this all go.” A vicious cycle.
The answer is to start with a better and healthier dialogue in your life. I applaud many of you out there reading who have started that process, and I hope today’s exercise is going to bring about some change for many more of you.
Mirror Work and Self–forgiveness
Have you rewritten your script? We spent a lot of time on that last month, and now, we’re
going to start living it!
The first part, though, is to accept and love who you really are. You’ve gotten more than a little beat up since the script was written in your life, and I’m willing to bet that you need to get that person – you – into a better place to start to be more productive and forgiven. So, I need you to take a journey with me and let’s get you taken care of!
I want you to stand in front of the mirror every morning, preferably naked, just like you were as a baby. You are going back to that time when you were innocent and accepted yourself, before any of these outside influences piled their beliefs on you. Look into your eyes, hold your face and say ten times, “I love you”. Then hold your shoulders and say, “I love you”. Repeat this holding your chest, tummy, legs and with each one, say, “I love you” ten times. Then hold your arms out as wide as you can and say, “I love you”. Caress your hair and again, ten times say, “I love you”. The whole time you are doing this, you are looking into the mirror and breathing it in. I love you. Now be mindful of what you are feeling… Be present… Don’t just stand there and repeat I love you over and over. That defeats the purpose. You must see yourself as the little child, that innocent baby. In fact, if you have a picture of yourself as a little girl or boy, put that in the bathroom where you can see it. Look into their eyes and tell them you love them.
What this does is reframes any thoughts that you’ve had up to this point about beating yourself up. It’s called a pattern interrupt and it stops that pattern of sabotage of guilt and shame. It starts your day off with loving thoughts about you. It reminds you that you are innocent, that you accept yourself totally and completely as when you were a baby.
If you release the need to blame yourself and be right all the time and be willing to see the
perfection of what is, then you can get to a place of understanding that there’s really nothing to forgive including yourself, because you are innocent and perfect just the way you are. And if you are having trouble getting there, trust me on this. If you stand in front of the mirror every morning, naked, and do the exercise, it’s very cleansing. There is no veil, it’s just you. Nothing covering you. You can’t hide. If you do this, it will help erase and let go of some of that trash in your trash compactor. And the more you do it, the more you release.
Suddenly, those triggers that happen to you daily, will not trigger you either at all or very little, because you’ll be falling in love with yourself again. It’s accepting yourself as perfect. You are perfect just the way you are and yet you can be so much more. That will stop the self–sabotage.
Because remember that guilt demands punishment. If you feel you are guilty or ashamed
about something, you will absolutely attract punishment either from yourself or from others.
Above all else, remember that you make a difference. Whatever you are doing in your life, you make a difference and you matter. You are important and the world would be totally different if you were not in it. You are perfect exactly as you are. If you believe in the Universe, or God, or The Great Spirit, or Higher Self or whatever you want to call it, just ask yourself, “Would that Spirit or that Creator really create something so horrible in me? Wouldn’t that perfect being create a perfect thing?
That might be the philosophical question of the day – “If God and the Universe is perfect and this Great Spirit created me, and I am part of that creation, wouldn’t I be innocent and perfect?” When pondering this, I’ve always thought about platypuses – Why did God create
them? How did platypuses get here? Why are they here? I’m not sure I understand, but they
are perfect, and I am not a platypus.
So remember – I am perfect and innocent and accept myself for who I am, and thank goodness, I am not a platypus. More importantly, you are loved, and you have the power to rewrite your script and put in the actors you want!
