Do You Yell at the Movie Screen of Your Life?

If you find you don’t like a movie, you don’t yell at the screen to change. But, is that what you do about your life?

I’d decided to use the Ho’oponopono method to work on old program tapes that run in my subconscious. If you’re going to aim at a target so you can hit it consistently, you need to practice and more than just a few times.

This can be uncomfortable because it means you have to face some unpleasant situations and treat them as the practice opportunities they are. You see, increasing consciousness isn’t so much about adding something as much as it is subtracting something. It’s about letting go of what holds you back. What usually holds you back is that you don’t see that what you’re doing holds you back.

A practice opportunity came when I spent two hours visiting with someone who complained the entire time. It was a non-stop negative stream of past hurts and how this person did that or didn’t do this. Nothing I offered made a difference. In fact, my efforts seem to amplify the situation.

During the two hours, I struggled with the Ho’oponopono technique, but kept repeating: I’m sorry, Divine, for whatever is in me that created this. Please forgive me for the image I hold of this person and of myself. Thank you for helping me to heal these images and for transmuting them into love. I love you and trust you to assist me with this for the highest good of all involved.

For the rest of that day and the next two days, every time I caught myself replaying that visit in my mind or memories of similar conversations, or complained to myself about the person, I’d stop and do the four statements in abbreviated form: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

It was genuinely astonishing to see how often I had to stop myself and repeat the four statements. I’d do this, and within seconds more tapes would start to run. After a while I said aloud, “Oh my God! I’m doing exactly what that person does.” The reflection wasn’t pretty.

It became clear that I was a projector running a film in my mind about the person. I cannot change the screen the film plays on, though that’s what I attempted during the visit; but I can deliberately decide not to play the film, especially over and over… and over.

All of this took real effort on my part. It took willingness to understand my part in all of it and a sincere desire to see what I was doing so I could do something else.

Think of some of your own challenges. What films are you projecting? Are they of struggle; ones that say you’re undeserving, unlovable, that life has to be difficult or that certain people have to be difficult? How often would you have to play these films before what you see on the screen is what you prefer to see? Right. It will never happen, if that’s how you address this.

You have to run better films if you want to see better images on the screen. You have to stop expecting the screen to change. This may not be easy. What is easier is to yell at or about the screen. It’s painful but easier than owning that we see the films we run.

Create and run films you prefer, even if you continue to modify them to improve them. Allow that it may (or may not) take a while for your projected image to get into focus and run smoothly on the screen. Watch that you don’t run a new film once then complain that this doesn’t work. Consider how often you run the negative ones and the results. This alone is evidence that it does work. Practice the same consistency with running better films as you have negative ones.

You are what you practice.© Joyce Shafer

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