Remove Your Sunglasses

“What we believe about ourselves can hold us hostage. When we wear a belief and look at life through it, it is difficult to convince ourselves that what we see is not what is real. With sunglasses on, life looks green to us. Knowing what is real requires that we remember that we are wearing glasses, and take them off. One of the great moments in life is the moment we recognize we have them on in the first place. Freedom is very close to us then. It is a moment of great power. Our life force may not require us to strengthen it. We often just need to free it where it has gotten trapped in beliefs, attitudes, judgement, and shame.”
Kitchen Table Wisdom
Rachel Naomi Remen, M, D.
http://www.rachelremen.com/
 
Several years ago we were on a family vacation driving from the Grand Canyon to our hotel. The distance on the map seemed short but the actual driving time took forever as we traveled around the mountains. We both were tense and I was getting tired so I had my wife take over the driving. Late afternoon seemed to creep up on us because we were so focused on reaching our destination to get some rest. My wife kept complaining how difficult it was to see as we drove on that narrow road with high snow embankments on each side of the road. She asked me to clean her glasses. As she handed them to me I realized she had been driving with her sunglasses on. We both were so tense and focused on the winding snow-banked road neither one of realized she was still wearing sunglasses even though it had become dusk. We burst into laughter! Once she put on her correct glasses she experienced what is quoted above from the book Kitchen Table Wisdom, “With sunglasses on, life looks green to us. Knowing what is real requires that we remember that we are wearing glasses, and take them off.”

Regardless of how much work I constantly do to be positive I get trapped occasionally in past beliefs that I allow to control me. That is why the words that I read in the book Kitchen Table Wisdom really connected with me today.

I was raised with very loving but also very fear filled parents who did not have a lot of spendable income. They were also dealing with the fear in the world at that time as our country had just entered into World War 11. Both of my parents had brothers in the war missing in action in Europe. Of course as a child I was not consciously aware of the stressful impact on the family. However as we have all come to realize, much of that emotional trauma was indeed transmitted to me though a word was never spoken in front of me.

I always had an adventurous spirit and I was determined to experience life to the fullest. My family was not able to afford big summer vacations. Most of vacations were spent at a family member’s camp on the water. We would go fishing and crabbing every day and cooked the catch each evening. But I wanted to do what other families were doing and that was traveling across the country. Subconsciously I said words to myself like Scarlett’s famous words from Gone with the Wind, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hunger again.” Coming from an Italian family we were always well fed. I just had a hunger for much more of life than I was presently experiencing with my parents. I wanted the financial means to support what I wanted to do in life. I wanted control of what I could or could not do.

Two issues that have created the biggest challenges for me in my life have been fear and not being able to control the “unexpected” outflow of money. In my blog posting last week I talked about the unexpected major plumbing and electrical expenses with which I was dealing. At that time the sunglasses I had on did not allow me to see what the real issues created by the stress. When these things happen in my life I go to my personal tool box and draw upon tools I believe will work for me to get me back on track to living a life of abundance.

Many years ago Fr. Larry used Hypnothearapy to help me overcome a nightmare that would awaken me and disturb my restful sleep. Corey Schoff  is a fantastic hypnotherapist cs@BodyMindLLC.com  and he has helped me deal with many of life’s challenges. He directed me to take my sunglasses off by going to my subconscious mind to see the root of the issue. It was letting go of fear and control.

In the session of being hypnotized I was able to go back to my childhood and feel the fear that was in the environment when I was growing up. I also got in touch with why I had the control issue over the finances. After the session I was able to realize why I allowed fear to control my thinking and why I began to panic when finances got out of my control.
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Having so many tools available to me from my tool box assists me in getting to the root of the issue immediately and resume to living life to the fullest. During the next week you may want to think of an occasion when you may have had sunglasses on. One of the tools I am using this week from my tool box is reading Kitchen Table Wisdom. This book is giving me insight and clarity in many areas of my life.