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The life of every living organism must be based on self-interest.  Every moment of our lives is based on it.  Breathing, eating, sleeping, loving, helping others.  A plant turns toward the sun in order to get the nourishment it needs.  And it’s flourishing gives us pleasure.  If it were to deny itself what it needs to do well, would we think it was being virtuous?  The very nature of life is based on self-interest.  You are ALWAYS doing what you conceive of as self-interest, even if it’s denying your self-interest in order to be what you believe to be virtuous.  The reason you would do this is because it makes you feel better about yourself.  If doing what you believe to be virtuous ended up making you feel bad about yourself, you wouldn’t do it.

Following your own self-interest defines who you are.  It is the expression of who you are.  When you are allowing yourself to move toward your enlightened self-interest you are contributing who you are to the whole.  You are revealing a piece of creation.

Even if you are not connected to your enlightened self-interest, you must start with the self-interest you can access in order to move toward more enlightened self-interest.  Those who deny their self-interest are living in an artificial shell, a false persona, in a false world.  They are not authentic.  Life around them is devoid of anything real, and therefore anything of real nourishment or value.

Before you made limiting decisions, and before you started creating false personas and false worlds, you were living in a state of true self-interest, i.e. what really benefited you.  Your focus was on life, truth, experience.  You were led by what mattered to you.  That is what guided your every moment — opening up your life, experience, and development.  You were participating in living, flowing, experiential truth.

What makes suicide bombers so frightening and difficult to combat is their denial of the most basic self-interest of being alive. They, presumably, believe they are following the self-interest of doing what it takes to be virtuous, by doing God’s work.  And they look forward to their reward in some version of heaven.

The people who are the most disconnected from their own most basic self-interest are the ones who act in ways that are the most distorted and dysfunctional.  And it generally results in out of control behavior, under the radar of consciousness.  For example people who are immersed in fundamental, repressive religious dogma, who can find no legitimate outlet for their human desires, can tend to act out sexually dysfunctional and destructive behavior in situations where they think it can remain hidden or not talked about, such as molesting children.

It is not possible to deny one’s own self-interest. It will be expressed in some form, either in its pure form or, as a result of being denied, in its distorted form.  In its distorted form, it is likely to be destructive.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

I addressed the below question in the previous “Ask Jane.”  In this “Ask Jane” I’m addressing it from a different perspective in relation to how it actually came up.

Lita: “I’m in a really great relationship with a man now, and things are going really well.  But I keep feeling afraid something will go wrong, and he will end up leaving.  I’m concerned because of this fear I’ll try to control things with him, that will actually cause him to leave.”

This question originally came up in Lita’s TimeLine session.  And the limiting decision at the core of this question turned out to be “I’m not good enough to have the relationship I want.”  The originating event was many lifetimes ago, and she was a woman in her late 30’s and she wanted this big, strong, handsome man in her village, but he wouldn’t have her, because she wasn’t pretty enough, or young enough.   And she wasn’t interested in any of the other men.  It just seemed that there was no one for her.

Jane (in the context of teaching during the learning part of the process): “The issue here is what is it that you really want? What you’re really wanting is the Divine.  What you’re really wanting is the essence of the Universe, that may be shining through this particular person.  And so it’s never an attachment to the person himself that is what you’re really wanting.  It’s the heart of intimacy, the heart of love.  And you can get that in a lot of different places.  You’re wanting love, and love is everywhere.  You find it through many, different sources, when you are a conduit for it.  When you are in that vibration, you’ll naturally attract it.  It’s not about having to have that man in order to be happy.  When you are in that vibration it’s an allowing of what’s true, which then allows the right person to come into your life, without the pressure or weight being on him.

But when you’re coming from the limiting decision that you can’t have what you want, you are needing to grab something that you believe you can’t have, which is controlling.  And inherent in it is loss. It’s coming from a place where you don’t have it, so that then is the reality you are creating.  From that place you can never get it.  And then whatever you can get, you don’t want.”

After the limiting decision was cleared: The way Lita then experienced her situation in that life time was that she could see good qualities in many of the men in her community, and many men were attracted to her, and it no longer seemed like an impossible situation.  And so then she was open to what was really there for her.

And in terms of her present reality situation, she no longer felt that fear that her boyfriend might leave.

A pivotal question at the bottom of how civilization has organized itself is “Is humanity inherently good, or is it bad, or is it simply weak and corruptible?”  The bottom line way we define the answer to that has to do with what we believe people would do if they weren’t controlled. And that has to do with the issue of self-interest.  If people are not controlled, or if they don’t control themselves, they will go toward their own self-interest.  And so the issue then becomes how we perceive what self-interest is.

The idea that self-interest is bad, is based on the idea of original sin.  In other words it is based on the idea that if people pursue what they desire, what really matters to them, including human desires, they will break Divine laws and will cause harm to others.  But the problem here is not inherent in the nature of self-interest, but in how we conceive of what self-interest is.

When many religious perspectives or spiritual philosophies define human self-interest, they are actually defining human emotional defense systems, which get built up as a result of having made limiting decisions.  And when they are advocating letting go of desires, this is also the framework they are referring to.  People’s emotional defense systems result in them going toward substitutes for what they desire rather than the real thing.  And these substitutes are generally harmful to oneself and others.

But humanity doesn’t live solely in their emotional defense systems, and we are in an evolutionary process through them.  Desiring these symbolic substitutes is not the nature of humanity or human desire.  People going toward these kinds of desires (that can often be addictive, and that we associate with shallowness, perversion or lacking in self-discipline) does not have to do with the inherent corruptibility or weakness of human beings, or the nature of human desires.  Self-interest is inherent in any living creature.  It’s not the self-interest that is the problem, it is the substitutes for it that are the problem.  And the substitutes are created because of the denial of the real thing. The way to enlightenment is not a denial of our self-interest, or of our human experience, it is the recognition and embracing of the truth of what it is.  It is coming into experience, not avoiding it — which means the difference between realizing that the nature of reality is positive, that if we come into what is true, it leads us to the highest good of all concerned.

On the one hand most of humanity doesn’t have any concept of the depth of the distortion of our perception of reality, and how much we are living and forming our perception of reality from an upside-down and insane perspective.  But on the other hand, there is little concept of the inherent goodness of the human soul, that what the truth is about who we inherently are is total goodness, not in spite of our self-interest, but because of it.  This is because what we really desire leads us to love, truth, connection, meaning, everything true and real.  What it is human beings truly desire is a part of the truth of the universe.  It is beyond any false persona or egoic self.  It is what can bring us out of the perception of the limited physical world we were born into, in which we forgot who we are beyond the physical experience.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

From Laura in Del Mar

Laura: I’m in a really great relationship with a man now, and things are going really well.  But I keep feeling afraid something will go wrong, and he will end up leaving.  I’m concerned that because of that I’ll try to control things and that will actually cause him to leave.  Any advice?

Jane: Many people in relationships believe their happiness and well-being depend on having that special person to fulfill their lives.  They have this internal image of what he or she will look like and be like.  And they have this belief that everything will be alright when they have this person.  But this is not where the source of well-being is, and any form of trying to make something outside of yourself the source of anything that really matters to you is eventually doomed to fail.

So let’s look at what it is you really want.  Perhaps it is love, emotional nourishment, connection, security…  The source of those things is not specific people.  If you don’t have those in your life it is because you don’t have the emotional channels open to receive them.  Limiting decisions, such as you are not loved, you are not safe, you need a man to take care of you, you are not valuable, and so on, will cause you to have the channels closed to receiving love, a sense of your value, feeling safe in the world, etc.

The universe is filled with resources, but they may not come in the form or direction you expect them to come in or from.  When you are receiving what really matters to you, you are receiving it from the universe, through some vehicle, such as a particular person in your life.  The source is the universe (or Life, the Divine, or however you conceive of it).

When you try to make it a specific person, you are putting huge weight and pressure on that person, and basically end up trying to control them.  This may give you a sense of panic, because the truth is you can’t control that person.  And you also can’t control the universe. What you can control is finding out what channels in you are closed that are causing you not to receive what really matters to you, and finding a way to open them up.  This means clearing the limiting decisions that are closing the channels.  One method for doing that is the NLP TimeLine process.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

Question from Fiona in Oceanside

Fiona: I’m working on forgiving my husband for being emotionally abusive to me.  I’m having difficulty doing that.

Jane: The need for forgiving someone comes from having first felt emotions such as anger, hatred or vengefulness toward him.  It’s based on the idea that he has wronged you.  Forgiveness implies that even though he has wronged you, you’re going to let go of these negative feelings and be either neutral or loving instead.

In this instance, you are still in the same situation with your husband, so the same feelings keep getting brought up in you toward him, which is why you can’t forgive him.

The painful feelings you are feeling as a result of your husband’s way of relating to you are caused by one or more limiting decisions* in you.  The limiting decisions* could be something like you are not valuable, or you don’t deserve to be respected, or men are more powerful or more valuable than women, and so on.  It is not your husband who you are angry at.  It is what he symbolizes that elicits the intense emotional responses in you.  And you are most likely symbolizing for him the intense emotions he is reacting to you out of.

Once you have dealt with the limiting decisions* at the bottom of the emotions he brings up in you, you will find there is nothing to forgive.  And your relationship with him will probably either change, or you will find no reason to stay in it, as you will no longer be trying to heal the issues in you by getting him to change.

* Limiting decisions are unconscious decisions made before the age of 6 or 7 that are always some form of life is not meant to work and/or there is something inherently wrong with you.

To listen to this webinar introduction, click here.

(People’s names are changed to protect their privacy.)

Sally: Jane, excellent synthesis and conclusions of this complex topic. Will each session be one hour?

Jane: Yes, each class in the 12-week Course will be an hour.

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Randy: Are you going to be teaching A Course in Miracles in this course?

Jane: No. I absorbed what was meaningful to me to absorb from A Course in Miracles. I studied it very intensely and it brought me to new ground in which I was seeing things from a different perspective.  And from standing on that perspective, I tapped into a whole other thought system from my own direct experience.

I got the idea from A Course in Miracles that life is meant to work.  And when I started seeing clients I started holding that in place.  I didn’t really know that it was true.  But I was holding it in place, and I was insistent on holding that in place.  I think I was born to do that, as I can’t figure out any other reason why I have held onto it with such strong intention. So whatever happened, I interpreted it from the frame-or-reference that life is meant to work.  And as a result, I started tapping into a whole body of work, which has kept unfolding and has made the work I do very effective.  Because TimeLine is such a fast process, I could almost immediately see the result of holding “life is meant to work” in place.  So it has been like a living laboratory over these past 14 years, seeing the results of standing on that premise, and finding that it is true over and over again.  We clear the limiting decision, and the person’s life reconfigures itself and proves that it has nothing to do with the way life works, or the external circumstance.

________________________

Jean: It sounds like by the time a person is 50 they might have made hundreds or thousands of limiting decisions.  So how long do you think it might take someone, an average person whose life isn’t working, to release enough limiting decisions so their life could work?

Jane: First of all you don’t keep making limiting decisions until you’re 50 years old.  Limiting decisions are made before the age of 6 or 7, sometimes in adolescence.  It’s rare that you make any limiting decisions beyond that age.

The number of limiting decisions and the length of time it takes to clear them depends on the soul’s path. Some people have a lot of stuff going on — by which I mean a lot of limiting decisions that surface — and they just have to deal with them.  They’re set up to make a lot of progress in this lifetime.  Other people seem to have an easier path, with less limiting decisions to deal with.  And it seems to vary from lifetime to lifetime. It depends on a combination of your soul’s particular path, and how much progress it decides to make in this lifetime.  It also has to do with the evolutionary process of your particular soul and of humanity in general.  At a certain point a more evolved level of functioning is expected of you in order for your life to work well.

In general when a person works with me, they work for a while and arrive at a place that works for them, at the particular stage in life they are at.  I had one woman who cleared the issues she needed to clear in relation to her husband, and their relationship now works wonderfully well, and she was finished.  And I haven’t heard from her since.  For some people, we clear the issues that were currently of concern to them, and I don’t hear from them for a year or two.  And then they come back to clear more, according to what’s up for them in their current life experience.

But that’s about the TimeLine sessions, and that’s different from what I’m doing in the “Life is Meant to Work” program, which has to do with the larger perspective, it shifts how you are experiencing life, and your perspective on what reality is. It’s working with getting you in alignment with the evolutionary process.

_____________________

Anita: If life is meant to work, what about catastrophes such as what happened in Haiti, the death and destruction wasn’t the result of their limiting decisions.  It might be the result of limiting decisions of those that are causing global climate change.  We’re making decisions and other people are making decisions.  So possibly what happened is other people’s limiting decisions can have a limiting effect on us. Some people’s decisions can change the world.  They affect everybody. To take an attitude that everything one endures is as a result of one’s limiting belief is to imply that we are islands unto ourselves and are unaffected by what takes place around us.

A baby born with an arm protruding out of its back because of the depleted uranium dumped in Iraq by the Americans, has not created its own reality.  A 7 point earthquake that kills and harms huge numbers of people is not created by the limiting beliefs of those people.  The fact that the over-population, pathetic housing conditions, poverty and ignorance of the people is a condition of American foreign policy conditions … (Anita wrote a very long question, too long to include here, so this is just a small excerpt.)

Jane: You’ve asked a lot of good questions.  This is a large subject and central to the teachings in this 12-week course and can’t be comprehensively explained in this brief Q & A format.  So I’ll just answer some pieces of it.

Your limiting decisions only have to do with you.  And other people’s limiting decisions only have to do with them.  You are never controlled by someone outside of yourself. When you clear the limiting decision, you find that your life shifts, no matter what it is that others are doing.

The alternative perspective to this is a judgmental good-versus-evil perspective, which is one of the causes of the problem — not a solution.  This is the perspective that causes people to be in fear, feel they have to control each other, to believe that what they really want will be damaging to others, and all kinds of misconceptions that leads to people attacking each other in the name of defending themselves.  It causes people to be afraid of being who they really are, in their full power.

I know this can be hard to grasp.  That’s why it’s a 12-week course, because you have to really get into the specifics of how experience is formed in order to untangle this whole thing.

Even on a very direct, relatively benign personal level, limiting decisions appear to make life impossible, and so without really understanding how that works, it’s hard to understand it for more extreme and global situations.  The examples I gave in my introduction, about clients’ whose lives turned around from appearing to be impossible to being possible, give some insight into that.

The amazing thing to me is that, whatever the situation is, when you clear the limiting decisions that are at the root of the painful emotions that come up in the situation — when you clear them, your experience of reality does shift.

Yes, we are all affected by each other, but whether our response is an emotionally triggered one or not, is the issue.  A trigger means that your experience of reality is distorted because of limiting decisions in that area of life.  You can tell whether it’s a trigger or not according to whether your response is empowered and resourceful or not.

What your mind does with each piece of experience, the way it interprets the meaning of it determines whether you go toward solutions or in the opposite direction, regardless of what is happening in your external environment.

It’s probably not possible to understand events and circumstances such as the current disaster in Haiti, or a child being born deformed, outside of the perspective of a soul’s journey.  Facilitating, and therefore experiencing, the TimeLine process (a hypnotic NLP process) with many people who have gone back into past lifetimes has given me a valuable perspective on the human process in relation to these kinds of events.

I’ll give you a typical kind of example, of which I have had many similar ones.  Let’s say the limiting decision we’re working on is that the person is defective.  And in the person’s present here-and-now life, he has a learning disability, which has been limiting his possibilities in life.

In order to clear a limiting decision it’s necessary to go back to the very first event in which it was made.  So let’s say we are brought back to a past lifetime, to an event that even I can’t reframe into life is meant to work, because it appears completely impossible — such as being born without legs, and the only means of survival is to do work that requires walking.  I have learned that when that kind of thing occurs, it’s not the very first event in which the limiting decision was made.  And when we do get to the originating event, you can see where the person’s interpretation was flawed or limited in scope.  So, with the cooperation of his unconscious mind, we go back to an earlier lifetime, when he was a 2 year old child, and his parent expected him to be able to do a chore way beyond his development, and when he couldn’t, was abusive to him.  So we can see here the problem is the child believing the parent represented reality, not the actual circumstance.  And that can easily be reframed with help from me and their present-moment adult perspective.

The reason the person continued that limiting decision into following lifetimes — sometimes even escalating it, such as being born without legs — is because after the limiting decision is made in the originating event, the unconscious mind is invested in proving that it is true, and structures the person’s life experiences in order to prove it.  This affects what happens in following lifetimes.

However, when this limiting decision gets cleared, the person’s unconscious mind reconfigures itself and solutions to their present moment life dilemmas become apparent.  I’ve seen it happen over and over again.

Now the person going through these different experiences — sometimes extremely painful experiences — is a part of that person’s soul path.  But the evolutionary process is to move into increasingly greater alignment with universal truths and with life, in order to move each person toward empowerment, happiness and well-being — toward a state of enlightenment.  It’s a process based on love.  A major purpose of the 12-week course is to facilitate people moving into this greater alignment.

So this is just a brief response, with much left unexplained, to a deep, complex subject that the “Life is Meant to Work” course is set up to address in depth.

For information about the 12-week Life is Meant to Work Main Course,
and to Register, click here.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

Question from Fellow Healer in New York

Fellow Healer: A dear friend of mine, who has worked the Law of Attraction (LoA) religiously for years, ended up broke at her mom’s house.  She called me distraught wondering why the universe isn’t bringing her the wealth she meditated on.  What the LoA professors neglect to tell us is that our soul is on a journey and that journey will be fulfilled.  Soul trumps LoA.  My friend now sees that going home offered her valuable healing time with her family and was vital to her path.

Jane: I agree with your conclusion that the soul’s journey trumps everything else.  However, the Law of Attraction does work perfectly, and people are always manifesting, but not necessarily what they consciously desire.  To manifest what you consciously desire, there has to be some combination of alignment between the conscious mind, the unconscious mind, and the higher self (i.e. the soul’s path).  When the conscious mind is in alignment with the unconscious mind, you are likely to manifest what you consciously want.  What causes conscious/unconscious mind misalignment are limiting decisions*.  Limiting decisions cause misalignment with what is really true.  They then cause the person to manifest the distortion that the unconscious mind now believes to be true.  I.e. if the person decides there is not enough, that is what they will manifest.  When the limiting decision* is cleared, the unconscious mind now aligns itself with the truth of abundance.

But the soul’s journey also affects how effective particular people are at manifesting what they desire.  Many people use, or try to use, the Laws of Attraction to manifest things that are not necessarily in their highest best interest (which also is a result of limiting decisions*).  At some point in the soul’s journey, the higher self does not allow that.  So this then requires the soul to evolve to going toward what truly benefits them — what I refer to as “enlightened self-interest” — before they will be effective at manifesting what they desire.

* Limiting decisions are unconscious decisions made in early childhood, and are always some form of deciding life is not meant to work and/or there is something inherently wrong with you.

There are certain cornerstones about the nature of reality that humanity in general holds in place that are out of alignment with larger truth.  These cornerstones are what the problems humanity faces are based upon.  And even many of those who have expanded their consciousness beyond that limited perspective — when it comes down to what their lives depend upon — are really standing on the old foundation for their reality.

To most people their perception of reality just is what is, and they don’t question the truth of it.  But our perception of reality is, in fact, very subjective and changeable.  There are many more bits of information that are bombarding our senses every moment than we can possibly take in.  We filter out most of it.  What bits of reality we take in, and what we filter out, is very subjective.

Perceptions of reality are held in place by individuals, by families and other kinds of groups, by countries, on up to the global human experience.  The more people holding a perception of reality in place, the more real the perception appears to be.  But that has nothing to do with the truth of the perception.

The thought system I will be teaching in the “Life is Meant to Work” webinar, shifts the old reality perceptions to be in alignment with larger truths.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

Question from Jered in Mission Valley

Jered: It occurs to me that the failure of big companies — such as General Motors that received bailouts — are not so much an example of limiting decision, as they are of “broken” organizations.  GM had to break before old methods were discarded for new. It makes me think of change with people.  Clearing decisions are baby steps. But traumatic events have outsized consequences – huge steps.

Jane: This is a complex subject that can’t be explained, so that it’s easily understood, in a few paragraphs.  I will be going into this more fully in my upcoming “Life is Meant to Work” webinar as part of explaining how our experience of reality gets out of alignment with Universal Truths.  But here is a brief explanation that I hope is helpful.

The failure of big companies, such as General Motors, is most likely based on perspectives of self-interest that are out of alignment with reality.  Whenever there are perceptions that are out of alignment with reality, there are limiting decisions* at the root of it.

People with similar limiting decisions* come together and hold in place a collective perspective on reality.  People are very invested in the particular way they perceive what reality is, which represents their source of stability, survival and well-being.  It is the ground they are standing on.  That perception of reality is often greatly distorted by limiting decisions* they have made.  In general people are not willing to give up that ground unless forced to.  That’s why it sometimes takes a major crisis before individuals — and especially a group of people, such as a major organization or company — are willing to restructure their perception of reality.  They have to perceive that it is in their self-interest to make a change.  The process of evolution occurs as what people perceive of as self-interest becomes increasingly more in alignment with what actually benefits them.

In this webinar Jane Ilene Cohen, Intuitive & Transformational Counselor, Author, Writer and Visionary unveils a totally positive thought system, developed through the work with her clients over the past 14 years.  This thought system is what has enabled her to facilitate profound life changes, reversing their experience of life not working.  At the center of it is the principle Life is Meant to Work. This thought system explains what causes your life to not work. It profoundly shifts your experience of reality, allowing your life to come into its full expression of abundance and well-being.

You’ll learn:

• How your perceptions of reality get distorted, putting you out of alignment with larger universal truths, causing life to appear to not work.
• How this relates to the individual and global crises we are in the midst of.
• A new thought system that re-orients your experience of reality to be in alignment with life and universal truths, facilitating your awakening into a more conscious, creative, and abundant life of well-being .
• How to become aligned with the evolutionary process, which is pushing humanity into a more evolved perception of reality — so that your personal transition into it will be an easier, more harmonious process.

This webinar is taught in three parts: the free introduction (begins 1/11), the pre-course (begins 1/19), and the main course (begins 2/2).Free Introduction:

Free Introduction:

In the free introduction, Jane will be interviewed by Mo Bailey about the positive new thought system she will be teaching in the Webinar.  You’ll get an overview of what this course is about.

When you sign up for this free introduction, you’ll also receive Jane’s list of “The Top 10 Reasons Relationships Fail.”

Monday, Jan. 11th: 5:00-6:00pm PST (8:00 – 9:00 pm EST) – or -

Tuesday, Jan. 12th: 7:00-8:00pm PST (10:00 – 11:00pm EST) – or -

Wednesday, Jan. 13th: 6:00-7:00pm PST (9:00pm-10:00pm EST)

To register: click here (or go to: www.janecohencounseling.com/Products.html#Webinar)

Pre-Course:

This 2-week class on Tuesdays or Wednesdays is the prerequisite for the 12- week main course.  In it you will learn how your perceptions of reality get distorted, putting you out of alignment with larger universal truths, causing life to appear to not work; and how this relates to the individual and global crises we are in the midst of.

When you register for the Pre-Course you will also receive Jane’s list of “The 10 Most Common Limiting Decisions People Make.”

Fee: $67

Tuesdays, Jan. 19th & 26th:
5:00-6:00pm PST (8:00 – 9:00 pm EST) – or-

Wednesdays, Jan. 20th & 27th:
6:00-7:00pm PST (9:00 – 10:00 pm EST)

To register: click here (or go to: www.janecohencounseling.com/Products.html#Webinar)

Main Course:

This is the main 12-week course. See the above initial description for a summary of this course. When you sign up you will also receive Jane’s list of the “Top 10 Attributes of an Evolved Leader.”

Fee: $387

Tuesdays, Feb. 2nd – April 20th:
6:00-7:00pm PST (9:00-10:00 pm EST)

The Pre-course is the prerequisite for taking this course. If you miss it, you can sign up for the audio recording, which will be available by Jan. 28th. If you miss the free introduction, the audio will be available by Jan. 14th.

To register: click here (or go to: www.janecohencounseling.com/Products.html#Webinar)