SPIRITUAL POWER TOOLS!
Use these simple tools and guides in your everyday life
Barbra has written two books, “Magnificent You” and “Why Self-Acceptance is So Powerful.These, along with her two guided meditation CD’s, are powerful spiritual tools that are available to assist you in your journey.
In “Why Self-Acceptance is So Powerful”, Barbra explains that when we resist and judge our feelings, we become trapped in a pattern of covering up our real emotions.This covering up protects us from our feelings, and is the source of suffering. To transform, we must identify the patterns in our life, which will allow us to experience emotion and free ourselves from our limiting self-beliefs. The following contains a short excerpt from “Why Self-Acceptance is So Powerful”, where Barbra defines the five patterns. In the book, she goes on to explain how we can work through them to a place of greater self-love and inner peace.
Note: These excerpts occasionally refer to M.U.D. (Mindful Understanding of the Density). The Mud refers to our negative emotions, racing mind, limited self-beliefs and physical pain.
The 5 Patterns
1. Responsibility
2. Control
3. Pleaser, Personal & Perfectionist
4. Over-Giver
5. Expression
6. Fear of Love & God
Pattern One:Responsibility
In pattern one, we feel responsible for another person’s journey. Trying to ‘fix’ others and be responsible for them puts us in a continuous state of over-focus on everyone else’s needs. In this pattern, our own needs get ignored. This leads to resentment, anger, and eventually a cynicism toward life.
When we try to find Love by ‘fixing’ another, we are unable to know what our own needs are. The pattern of being responsible for someone else blinds us to our own needs. More importantly, it blinds us from having to face our own Mud. This pattern works very well for the purpose of hiding from our Mud, but it keeps us in a continual state of suffering.
Being responsible for someone else gives us a sense of worthiness. This pattern, like all the patterns, doesn’t give us this feeling of worthiness all the time because the Love is coming from outside of us. We cannot meet someone else’s needs 100% of the time. We cannot ‘make’ them happy all the time. When we feel responsible for another we unknowingly blame ourselves for any pain they experience.The responsibility pattern leaves a person feeling like they can never do enough, so they feel they are not enough. This pattern continually reintroduces the feeling of ‘I’m bad’ or ‘guilt’. It keeps an individual in a ‘gerbil wheel’ of recreating the same experience.
Pattern Two: Control
In pattern two, we feel the need to control both our emotions and outside conditions. We try to control our emotions because we don’t trust the natural flow of Love-Grace within us. Letting go and allowing our own natural greatness is impossible when we are in the pattern of control.
In this pattern we base our worthiness on how many external conditions we have ‘under’ control. What we choose to control can vary.It can be almost anything from our spouse, to the managing of our employees, to the cleanliness of our house.
Releasing control will reveal the repressed fear (Mud) underneath. Once this fear is felt and accepted a person will realize and feel the infinite Love-Grace that is working within their lives. Releasing the need to control allows us to intuit what actions to take, and when to wait. Releasing the need to control actually allows great control, because we are then in tune with the natural order or flow of things.
Pattern Three: Pleaser, Personal & Perfectionist
In pattern three, we try to measure our worthiness by whether people like us, how much money we make, our job title, etc. A person trapped in pattern three is a people pleaser, which will always result in perfectionism. A person only tries to be perfect to ‘prevent’ themselves from being judged. The pattern of people pleasing and seeking approval leads us to being very attached to what people think of us, resulting in us taking everything personally.
When we need to have other people’s approval we are continually trying to find ‘who we are’ in their eyes. We lose our ability to know where we begin and another ends. With this need for approval we are continually striving to be perfect, to become the vision of worthiness for society and the world.
Pattern Four: Over-Giver
In pattern four, we are an over-giver. We measure our worthiness by how much we give. We feel Good-God only when we give to another, and actually feel guilty when we receive.Like all patterns, this pattern covers up feelings of guilt, insecurity, anger, grief, and fear. In this pattern we feel bad when we receive, so we block our own support in life.
Concern over money reflects this pattern.People with this pattern tend to complain about not having enough money, but ultimately are not allowing themselves to receive it. In this pattern, worthiness is dependent upon how much we give and not how much we receive. Because of this, a person in this pattern continually has the Mud revalidated. They create beliefs about themselves and life such as, “I will always be poor”, “Wealth is for a select few”, “I am loved for what I do, and not for Who I am”, “My needs are not important, I am not important”, “Working in a profession I love is impossible, life would never support my endeavor.”
Pattern Five: Expression
In pattern five, we have a lack of expression and we self-sacrifice. This pattern is based on keeping ourselves quiet and unseen. We believe that as long as we are quiet then we are lovable. We are afraid to make a ripple, hurt anyone’s feelings or cause any conflict. In this pattern we are afraid to express our needs or make our inner truth known. We may have never been shown what healthy expression or conflict looks like.
In the expression pattern we hold back who we are because it cannot be trusted. We believe as long as we hide who we are, people will like us. We don’t speak what we feel and we keep our opinions and feelings to ourselves, so feelings of unworthiness are constantly revalidated.
Because we unconsciously believe that people won’t love our true expression we fear our own light. In this pattern a person fears their greatness. In pattern five a person fears success more than failure. The failure, or inner Mud, a person is very familiar with. It is the light or the inner greatness that is the unknown.
Pattern Six: Fear of Love & God
Pattern six is related to all of the previous patterns. Because the patterns become our way of experiencing Love, Love becomes conditional and subconsciously feared. We are afraid of receiving Love because the conditional love we have come to know has been painful and difficult.
We try to find Love in patterns that are never 100% fulfilled. Because of this, we continually feel Love can be taken away. Because Love becomes something outside of us, we fear the loss of Love. The patterns constantly revalidate the Mud, as well as the feeling that Love can be lost.
Our greatest fear is the loss of Love, and in the patterns Love is continually ‘found’ and then lost again. As we heal the five patterns, Love becomes something inside of us, that no-thing or person on Earth can take away. We realize Love can never be lost, because WE ARE that LOVE. We become aware that God does not punish or betray us; it is only in our attempts to escape our Mud that we betray ourselves.
When we clear the patterns and feel our emotions, we come to trust Love, awakening to the spiritual truth that Love brings more Love. We awaken to our complete and utter worthiness and feel within ‘God and I are one’.We realize that simply loving and accepting ourselves is the most powerful and profound thing we can do.
We are all innocent, simply trying to escape our own Mud and find Love outside of ourselves. The greatest gift we can give to the world, our family, our friends, or any situation is our conscious, aware, self-focused, loving self. Love yourself, love your Mud, and you will know the truth of yourself as Love.
You can find more detail in these two printer-friendly charts, which help to define the patterns.
