Recently I had an interesting conversation, which I now feel I ought to share with you. A friend, who is going through a divorce, contacted me admitting she’s feeling completely blocked in just about everything in her life. She had tons of things to do concerning her work, her projects, her kids, her home, with the separation, with moving on in life etc., but found even the smallest things a huge struggle, not knowing how or where to start. During her marriage she became excessively reliant on her husband and now saw the prospect of being solely responsible for day-to-day activities very frightening.

We decided to break things down and below is a summary of how we went about it.

It was immediately obvious that my friend  was aware, open and sincere about the challenges facing her, so we needed to determine the nature of her blockage. The laws of the world dictate that RIGHT AWARENESS necessarily leads to RIGHT ACTION… but, as she was unable to convert her awareness into action suggested that her awareness may have been only partial. What was causing the blockage?

We began by analyzing her relationship in space and time. Life is all about movement through space and time, it’s about change, hence STAGNATION inherently causes resistance to life, and could by itself be the cause of her trauma. We took decision No.1: Keep moving! Whatever you do – don’t stop and stagnate.

Second, we needed to determine the direction or the flow of her reality, namely: was there something from her PAST that was holding her back, or something that she was afraid of, or reluctant to face, in her FUTURE…? She thought about it and realized it was both. Something or several experiences from her past were holding her back, plus she was afraid of facing the future. Decision No.2: Identify and become aware of your blockages. Then move beyond the blockages. But how?

We decided our next step must be to relinquish both past and future… but, where does one go? We chose the only TRUE REALITY… the only place where BALANCE can exist… we chose the NOW, the present… Simply appreciating WHO we are, WHERE we are and WHAT we are, right NOW, in this moment, puts us back in charge and reinstates balance… We focused on gratitude/feeling grateful for all the things and abundance that we have at our disposal, right here right now! Genuine GRATITUDE is an immense healer and immediately diminishes fear. It worked!

The second step was to address her deepest fears, all from the safety of the present moment, and from the comfort of gratitude. We identified the fact that she had become incredibly dependent on her husband, not only financially, but also in her many daily functions. Although she was beginning to operate independently, and was incredibly proud of doing things on her own for the first time ever, her achievements seemed like small steps in comparison to the tasks now facing her. She was concerned about the welfare of her children, of not having much contact with strangers and the unfamiliar world, with how general things function, etc. She was afraid of not knowing and needed to change her perception and perspective about truth, and about her reality.

We began by remembering that we are creatures of habit, and that the mind has this amazing capability of playing dirty tricks upon our awareness. The truth is that what’s truly scary is having to RELY on somebody ELSE, never being in charge of who we are, unable to take charge of our own life and affairs, always taking what others give us etc. My friend had been doing this TRULY SCARY STUFF for so many years, that she had come to believe the opposite… namely, that it’s scary taking charge of her own life. In psychology this is sometimes referred to as LEARNED HELPLESSNESS. Namely, we are exposed to a certain type of a stressor for so long, that we stop responding to it. Instead, we accept it, and push it into our subconscious or even worse, into the unconscious.

I became familiar with Learned Helplessness through research I had been doing for the Unfinished Book… it brought back memories of the most important truth, which we must embrace, when moving from our teenage years to adult lives…. when I left school and enrolled in my first self-help seminar, I was told that “we were all personally responsible for what happened to us.” It was soooo scary at first… I was used to my parents taking care of things… and it was so comforting to have someone to blame  when things went wrong… I could blame friends, family, the government, etc… then I was told that I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR ME… huh…

Slowly I began working through the sense of it all and soon realized the enormous beauty of being in CHARGE OF MY OWN DESTINY, of the infinite potential within, of NOT having to rely on anybody else… just ME! Woooow, what a great feeling… I could smell freedom… no need to preoccupy myself with millions of people… my biggest and main preoccupation was ME… the answers to all dilemma and challenges were hidden within… and by learning about who I truly was I soon discovered that I was the world, the heavens, and thus I was God, so to speak… the same God that dwells in all of us…

The truth my friend needed to hear and to accept was that she was the only and best person to take charge of her life, to do what was RIGHT FOR HER. She needed to be reassured that life is not about perfection, it’s about movement and about response-ability… an ability that all self-aware beings possess… to respond to situations and to responsibly co-create our reality… and nobody is as qualified to take care of us as THE SELF. And the really beautiful thing is, that when we are dealing with the self, there are NO intermediaries, NO places to travel to, and NO goals to achieve, because everything we need is ALWAYS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW… we only need to RE-DISCOVER who we already are, the infinite potential within… WE ARE THE PATH and every goal is just another stage in our awakening, a position upon our path…

To summarize: Until not long ago, my friend’s husband was one of her most important goals… my friend was GOAL-ORIENTED and this was setting her up for eventual turmoil… goals always lead to turmoil and we fight against this truth by hanging on or continuously replacing our goals with new goals and new goals and so on until we eventually wake up, or pass on… But now my friend was finally smelling real freedom… and when freedom is misunderstood, it’s scary to begin with… but we must keep moving… from movement comes growth… and through growth we push aside the so-called important goals and exchange them for a PATH of meaning and true fulfillment. True liberation comes NOT from doing what we want, when we want it, and for as long as we want it… True liberation comes from doing what is RIGHT… from doing what needs to be done… and ONLY WE know what is right for us… this means true freedom and fulfillment can only come from within, not from the world or other people… Yes, we plan for the future, we plan together with our partners and our loved ones… and we collaborate… but we live in the NOW and stay faithful to the truth of the self… we seek coherence and greater truth, the truth we can adhere to collectively… but we remain open and sincere, and allow the truth from within to guide us… We use our truth and every moment to become a little better than yesterday… a little wiser, kinder,, more peaceful… and every small improvement inherently leads to growth… and growth is the essence of our purpose, of our meaning, of our fulfillment, and of our love and happiness.