THE SIMPLE EVOLVEMENT OF LIVING SIMPLY
Life is meant to be simple
full of love and acceptance
of who we really are
spirit beings
having an opportunity
to experience life fully
embracing all that
life has to give us.

The phone rang as I reached to dial a telephone number I had decided to call just a few moments before. It was the person I was going to call. Coincidence? Can you remember thinking about someone for a short time only to have them call or cross your path? There is an invisible link between us all.

JANE'S SEETHING ANGER

Jane experienced this link when she resolved a relationship conflict with Mary during an extended family function. Jane had considered her cousin, Mary, to be sneaky and prone to going behind people's back rather than having candid dialogs. Jane had shared an apartment with Mary and had considered Mary to be “true to form’ when she moved out without discussion or notice. Mary appeared to be alienated after moving and Jane took it all personally, feeling betrayed and hurt.

Jane soon developed a seething anger toward Mary. She became repulsed by the thought of interacting with her in any way and chose to withdraw from the relationship. Even withdrawing couldn't help her escape because she continued resisting her negative emotions. All her relationship choices about Mary had her caught up in this pattern.

Jane attempted another approach to dealing with her unhappiness. She tried to forgive Mary for her behavior several times. Nothing seemed to change. She even tried to forgive herself for resenting Mary's behavior. No change! She doubted that Mary would ever conform to the way she thought Mary should be.

Jane had resigned herself to extended unhappiness. And now at a family function she had chosen to withdraw. She had not considered that her feelings toward Mary might be contributing to Mary's behavior. The only solution she had considered was to avoid being in the same area with Mary.

JANE REACHES A BOILING POINT

Then Jane reached a boiling point of emotional pain during the family function where she could see her present pattern was no longer acceptable. Jane had a second motivator for changing her relationship with Mary and that was physical pain. She was experiencing frequent and intense headaches during this relationship conflict.

She had eliminated earlier headaches about other issues in just a few minutes using The Simple Method™. She knew that overcrowding her body cells with resisted feelings about the relationship could be responsible for her latest headaches. Letting-go of her resistance to those feelings would release the cell tension and any associated headaches. In addition, she saw the possibility of more serious health concerns if she continued to hold on to resisted feelings. Even with this understanding, she continued to resist her negative feelings.

WHAT JANE DID

Finally, Jane called me and said she had enough and was ready to let-go of all resistance to feeling negative about Mary. She remembered that she was not a bad person for having negative feelings. Negative feelings are a part of experiencing life. Holding those feelings, by the act of resisting them, was responsible for her misery and headache concerns.

She simply allowed herself to feel each negative emotion for a few seconds until each resistance to the emotion was gone. This choice released the negative emotion imprint on her memory and she could no longer access negative emotions about what had been a conflict.

Then the only emotions that were left to be accessed about their relationship were positive ones. Negative emotions had obscured her positive emotions. This had kept her from realizing that a positive relationship could quickly and willingly be rejuvenated.

One by one, Jane let-go of the positive emotions about Mary and could see that they had been there all along. Jane let-go until there were no negative or positive emotions that she could access about Mary. The truth of their relationship became obvious as her perceived view dissolved.

As her anger disappeared in this process, she saw that her past forgiveness had been directed toward getting her cousin to conform to her expectations. She had been giving "lip-service" to forgiveness by focusing on getting Mary to change. It was beginning to be obvious to her that true forgiveness required a change within her. It was time to let go of wanting Mary to be different.

Within herself, Jane decided to earnestly forgive Mary for being the catalyst in bringing out anger and other negative feelings in her. Then she earnestly forgave herself for having those feelings toward Mary. As she earnestly forgave, she acknowledged the changed feelings within herself toward Mary. The stage was set for the act of forgiveness to resolve the conflict.

CONFLICT RESOLVED WITHIN 15-MINUTES

Within fifteen minutes after Jane's decision to earnestly forgive her cousin and herself, Mary sought Jane out and initiated a conversation. During the conversation the conflict was exposed and then defused. Jane was amazed by this turn of events that occurred by earnestly forgiving. She marveled at the miracle of forgiveness.

WHAT JANE UNDERSTOOD ABOUT MAKING CHOICES

When I assisted Jane on the evening she decided she was ready to let-go of this conflict with her cousin, three things happened to make that possible:

• 1.She remembered how her conscious decisions about emotions were impressed upon her body and how both her health and emotional state were compromised.
• 2.She made choices about her emotions that allowed her to rise above her perception of their relationship to what was actually happening.
• 3.She felt free to earnestly choose to forgive both her cousin and herself for having engaged in this conflict.

WHAT JANE UNDERSTOOD ABOUT EMOTIONAL MEMORY AND REMOVAL

Remembering Emotions

• The cells of our bodies have intelligence and memory. She remembered that body part transplants have been followed by stories of the recipient's sudden new thoughts, cravings and habits after surgery.
• Feelings are stored and recalled from the cells of our bodies rather than the brain. This action is similar to entering data on a computer keyboard and pressing the Enter Key. The computer program chooses a cell on the Hard Disk (the body) of the computer for future access of the data. When we want the computer to manipulate the data, it is taken from storage and put in the Processor (computer brain) for manipulation.

Remembering Negative Emotions

• We resist having a negative emotion we are experiencing when we really want an opposite emotion. For example, when Jane was angry she really wanted to feel happy so she resisted feeling angry. During that resistance she unconsciously chose body cells to store the anger emotion in and it became a memory. The more she resisted feeling angry, the tighter she attached the anger to cells and the more impact the anger had on her.

Removing negative emotions

• Everyone has the ability to consciously locate the chosen storage cells for each resisted negative emotion. We can quickly remove the emotion from cell storage (memory) by re-experiencing the emotion without wanting to have an opposite emotion. For example, Jane would remove an anger memory by accepting feeling angry inside without wanting an opposite emotion. She would know she was successful when she could not access the emotion again a minute later.

The most important benefit of removing negative emotions is that when the last negative emotion is removed, the next emotion uncovered is a positive one 100% of the time. We can always feel positive about any relationship or event even if it has previously been devastating or depressing to us.

Nothing in our world of awareness needs to change for us to be positive, happy or secure. Our world of awareness appears to change according to the level of awareness within our selves and the internal decisions we make.

Removing Positive Emotions

• Because positive emotions are pleasant, we often have a desire to stay attached to positive emotions. Being attached to, or holding on to a positive emotion, also stores the emotion in body cells. This keeps us from having greater positive emotions. When we are unattached to positive emotions we will let ourselves experience other positive emotions of greater meaning in our life. Similarly, if you are on the bottom step of stairs, you can be attached to that level and experience whatever you can see from there. The other choice is to be unattached to that level so that you can go to higher levels and a higher vantage point.

Resistance To Emotional Experience

• Experiencing what we are feeling right now without any resistance does not store emotions in the body and they cannot be recalled with the event.
• We are never hurt by freely having an emotion no matter how terrible it seems. The emotion will only last a few seconds and will not be remembered when there is no resistance. We are only hindered by the desire to resist having a negative emotion or to hold on to a positive emotion. It is the desire to give importance to emotions that creates memories of feeling limited. Emotions just exist to be experienced and have no identity or staying-power within themselves.
• It is helpful to think of an emotion as being invisible or having no identifying characteristics unless we are resisting it. Take away the resistance that has been given to an emotion and it can neither be felt, identified nor stored. Emotions don't hurt us but the resistance with which we experience them can have devastating effects on us.
• What bothers us about what we see in someone else are the similar characteristics or tendencies that we have seen in ourselves. Our first response is often our desire to change the other person. However, resolution of the relationship conflict becomes possible when we look within ourselves.

OUR HIGHER CONNECTION

Since we are invisibly connected, we have as much or more affect on those we earnestly forgive than we do on ourselves. Jane certainly did not initiate a resolution in the relationship beyond her silent act of forgiveness. Was it coincidence that Mary came to Jane within a few minutes after her decision to earnestly forgive? Perhaps you can recall similar results of earnest forgiveness.

Jane's past relationship with Mary also appeared to change, for what is the past other than how we feel about it now? Her earnest forgiveness was the key element in breaking her habit pattern of resisting new negative feelings about Mary. She could then progress to the positive feelings that are always behind negative ones. She can no longer harbor resentment about those past relations because her memory of them is connected to her current positive feelings. Stated in a different way, Jane chose a new past with Mary when she chose to allow different feelings to be associated with her experiences.

All of Jane's future experiences are being influenced by her present choices as well. When we make choices about our present feelings, we simultaneously influence the future as well as the past. Jane knows that whenever she earnestly forgives anyone and herself, she will have similar results to those she had with Mary. She can influence the past and the future any time she chooses.

And if Mary received the invisible message that she had been forgiven, had she also received the invisible message earlier that she was loathed? Expand this possibility to our feelings about many other people and even the world's population in general. What are we participating in? Are we contributing to acts of kindness and understanding or acts of terror and misunderstanding?

Jane tells us that she and Mary, the person she could not stand to be around, have in two months become the best of friends because of forgiveness. Her frequent and intense headaches have ended. Every day we likewise make choices that renew our past or retain the same old painful past.