Clients sometimes come to me with preconceptions of what is causing them distress and what will resolve the issue. They come to me wanting validation of these preconceptions and the identities they’ve built for themselves validated. They can be desperate for this, in fact, as if it’s a lifeline to a drowning person and that having the validation will melt away all the difficulties they are having in this life. Usually these preconceptions lead to someone other than themselves being responsible for how they are feeling, for making choices about what to do next, for being responsible for the results of those choices. This can be very frustrating for them because their bodies and their soul books won’t confirm this. In fact many times they will contradict the preconception which can be frustrating for me because now I need to find some way to present this information that might help and support them in their becoming when they least want to hear it. *sigh*
Usually I see these coming in people asking for past life information that will explain why this/that/the other is happening to them. Sometimes there is past life influence, most of the time not. For some reason they feel that being influenced by a past life will make things make more sense, at least that’s what they are saying consciously. What they are looking for emotionally seems to be a release from being responsible for the situation. If powers out of their control are doing this, then what can they do *shrug*. Some are looking for a spell or a meditation or a healing ceremony that will release them from the thrall of this past life situation. Since most times there isn’t a past life situation, I can’t offer them such a thing. Most life situations are about our actions in this lifetime, choices we are making now. Yes, they are influenced by past lives, but in the same way that our current life situation is influenced by our childhoods and experiences and personal history in this one. Our childhood self isn’t pulling the strings in this life now like some wicked puppeteer, it’s the building blocks that have helped form us into our current self. We aren’t controlled by them, we are more than the sum of our past experiences.
There are others with preconceptions about who they are based on the narrative their families have created for them, whether that is family of origin or family of choice. Mostly this happens with people deeply involved with dysfunctional families. The family dynamic works when no one questions the behaviors or rules of the family. This can be true of the deeply religious, the addicted (drugs/alcohol/sex…), the highly political, the purely business oriented, or even the deeply committed (diet restrictions, political causes, activists). If the person decides to do something that the family doesn’t like or goes against the rules, such as if someone from an alcoholic family decides to get sober, the family can react violently to this by either ostracizing the person or, more usually, by attempting to get them to stop this choice by making them miserable and making them think they are intrinsically bad for doing so. These clients have preconceptions that they are bad and cognitive dissonance because making the changes they have has caused them to be healthier and happier than they have ever been before and yet more miserable because they have lost their way and are now living in, what for the family unit would be considered sin. They come asking what they can do to merge their new life with the family. They want to know how they can “split the baby” like the story of the Judgement of Solomon. And the problem is that they already are and that’s why they are in such agony. Their preconceptions are causing them to divide themselves in half and no one can life that way.
Preconceptions sound like such easy things to remove. Like removing rose colored glasses so you can see the world as it really is. The problem is they are deceptions that are meant, well meaningly, to protect the person from the reality they don’t want to face. They are afraid of the pain of facing it and so cause themselves pain by attempting to live in a preconceived world. The difficulty is that the pain they are causing is usually greater than what they would go through if they removed the deception and it lasts as long as the preconception is held. Unlike the reality, where the pain would move at a normal pace. It might seem overwhelming at first, but it would move on and happiness would break through like the blue skies of spring after storms. But there is no way to get them there until they are willing to look up.
