READ TIME: 13m
DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 7 months ago
There are repeating patterns that occur in our lives. Perhaps you’ve already noticed a few of them. Such as anytime you infatuate with something, you attract its opposite. Or whatever you try to avoid you keep attracting.
Let’s explore these repeating patterns in more detail.
I'd like you to imagine a magnet. One end of the magnet has a positive pole and the other end has a negative pole.
Imagine that the positive pole represents something you're seeking. The negative pole is something you're avoiding.
No matter what you do, you can't separate the poles from each other.
If you cut the magnet in half, you'd have a positive and negative on the one half, and a positive and negative on the other half.
And if you cut both halves again in half, you'd have four positive-negative, positive-negative, positive-negative, positive-negative magnets.
The Buddha stated, the desire to seek that which is unobtainable (seeking the positive pole of the magnet only), and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable (avoiding the negative pole of the magnet), is the source of human suffering.
Yet many people spend their lives searching for one-sided outcomes, pleasure without pain, peace without war, nice without a mean, kind without cruel, and give without take.
But these polarities exist in a balance of pleasure and pain, peace and war, nice and mean, kind and cruel. These pairs of opposites are the nature of the universe.
The unity of opposites has been known even back to Heraclitus.
But when you strive to get one side, you’ll keep attracting the side that you're trying to avoid. Jung called it the shadow.
You can't get rid of your shadow. It follows you around.
If you're searching for calm, you'll attract turmoil. If you're searching for peace, you'll attract conflict. If you're searching for protection, you'll attract an aggressor.
People often think if they affirm only positive words, they’ll get only positive outcomes. But whatever you're searching for, you may also experience, but the opposite pole will come with it.
I’m sure you’ve had the experience of being resentful to some individual. Where you perceived their action (or inaction) to be all negative (with no positive). Where, because you were so angry and frustrated, you struggled to sleep at night and their judged action or inaction occupied space and time in your mind.
In this situation, you were conscious of the downsides and unconscious of the upsides. Whenever you only see one side, it keeps running around in your brain as brain noise until you bring it back to balance by seeing both sides simultaneously.
The same occurs when you’re highly infatuated with somebody. In this situation, you’re conscious of the upside, unconscious of the downside, and you have a highly polarized positive label. Again, it's going to end up as noise in your mind.
Anytime you try to separate the two poles, separate the inseparable, divide the indivisible, label the unlabeled, polarize the unpolarizable, divide the indivisibles, name the ineffable, they're going to occupy space and time in your mind, and the more you try to get one side, the more the other side is going to accompany.
EVERY EVENT HAS TWO SIDES
If you infatuate with something, you automatically resent its opposite. And if you resent something you're infatuated with its opposite. They come in pairs.
If you're infatuated and have a fantasy about how life is supposed to be and life doesn't match your perception, you'll be depressed. The elation in your mind comes in tandem with the depression.
People are sometimes labeled with clinical depression. They’re told they have a biochemical imbalance. I’m not convinced that’s the cause. From my research and work, I believe the biochemical imbalance is merely a correlate, that the source of depression is imbalanced perceptions. They’re having an expectation that life is one-sided which of course it cannot be because life has two sides.
Inside the mind, they're comparing their current reality to what they wish it would be (more positives than negatives). The way it is, when they compare it to how they wish it would be, seems to have more negatives than positives, because of the law of contrast of opposites.
Any time you strive for that which is unobtainable and try to avoid that which is unavoidable, you're going to perceive that you’re suffering.
You're going to keep attracting the very pattern in your life that you keep trying to avoid.
Giving yourself permission to embrace both sides of life simultaneously is liberating.
LIVE ACCORDING TO YOUR HIGHEST VALUES
Whenever you're living in accordance with your very highest value and you know what's really important to you, and you know what's really priority to you, you'll notice that you're more resilient and adaptable because you're more objective and neutral.
When you're living by your highest values, your blood, glucose, and oxygen go into the forebrain, you're activating systems 2 thinking where it's a little slower, but you start to become more objective and reasonable, less polarized and emotional.
You're seeing both sides of things more simultaneously. You’re not trying to avoid one side or pole and seek the other.
Your amygdala drives you to seek prey and avoid predators. It adds valency to your perceptions meaning that it drives you to polarize incoming perceptions to either positive or negative.
You need both supportive prey and challenging predator to sustain and maintain life. Prey without predators would lead you to be gluttonous, fat, and not fit. Predators without prey would lead you to be emaciated and starve without fit. But put the two together and you maximize fitness.
The same thing in your life. But many times you may have been hoodwinked into thinking you're supposed to get positive without negative, nice without mean, kind without cruel. But life doesn’t work that way.
PURSUE CHALLENGES THAT INSPIRE YOU
If you pursue challenges that inspire you and embrace the pains and pleasures in the pursuit of them, you will have the most stable focus and fulfillment.
But if you're trying to get a one-sided world with all pleasure, no pain, if you’re in a hedonistic pursuit, you usually end up attracting an accompanying painful nightmare.
It's not wise to seek a narrow one-sided world. It's not wise to label people or events. Every time you judge someone, you’ll end up feeling empty, unfulfilled.
In my Breakthrough Experience seminar program that I've been teaching for nearly 35 years, I share the Demartini Method which helps people to clear their labels, see both sides and become more balanced, present, and objective.
YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
Anytime you perceive an event to have more positives than negatives or more negatives than positives, your memory of it becomes stored in your hippocampus or subconscious mind and it runs us.
Your amygdala in your subcortical brain, assigns a valency of positive or negative to your incoming perceptions and these polarized memories and imaginations are then stored in the hippocampus, which is your memory system for survival. This is what we then call your subconscious mind which holds these previously polarized associations.
Anytime you get around some individual or event that reminds you of this previous perception, it brings up that association and you want to seek its opposite (if it's painful), or seek it (if it's pleasureful) and avoid that thing that's opposite, that's painful.
The second you do, you end up going into a vicious cycle of repeatedly trying to seek something that's not obtainable and avoid something that is not avoidable.
Pursuing fantasies (prey) and trying to avoid nightmares (predator) is what animals are driven to do.
What distinguishes you from the animals is our ability to have reason and objectivity and to use your brain in a more balanced, objective, strategic manner. Your ability to embrace both pleasure and pain in the pursuit of something that inspires you and has meaning.
You are capable of balancing both polarities and seeing both sides simultaneously. If you pursue a balanced orientation, you moderate the repeating over-seeking and avoiding cycles.
Anytime you have stored in your subconscious mind some pleasure without a pain or a pain without a pleasure, a positive without a negative or negative without a positive, you're going to be storing that and it's going to run your life and it's going to keep repeating. It will remain as noise in your mind.
You'll be keeping going after the things you think are fantasies and you'll keep avoiding the nightmares and you'll keep attracting those because you're here to grow, which requires both poles.
TWO SIDES IN RELATIONSHIPS
One of the actions that I have people do in my seminars is to write down what are they seeking in a mate. We all have this search image and this anti-search image when we're looking for a mate.
The search image is all the behaviors that have supported your values throughout your life that you compiled into a composite, you then search for that. That's the pleasure you want. If you see this you are turned on.
Your anti-search image is all the things that have challenged your values, you have created a composite of that and that's a behavior you want to avoid. And if you see this, you are turned off.
If you make a list of everything you're searching for, you'll find out it's already in your life within one or many people.
And the opposite, your anti-search image list of traits is also in your life within one or many people.
If you go through your life, through time, you'll find out that they're both there all the way through your life in one or many people. So you didn't gain or lose anything. You just changed the form of things.
When you become masterful you live in a world of transformation, when you are more mass conscious you live in the illusions of gain without loss, or loss without gain.
If you strive for that which is unobtainable (one-sided outcomes), you're just going to create suffering in your life.
If you realize you're going to experience both in relationships, you're going to have behaviors that you're going to want to hug and slug about - both cooperation, competition, peace and war, you will be more prepared for a loving relationship.
During the Breakthrough Experience, I ask: “How many of you have peace and war in your family? How many have hugs and slugs in your relationships, agreements and disagreements, support and challenge in your interactions with others”
They all put their hands up.
When you embrace the whole of yourself, the people you care about, your goals, life, the world, you'd be surprised, life's pretty amazing.
But when you keep trying to get rid of half of it and only search for the other half of it, you'll keep going through repeating cycles of fantasies and nightmares, fantasies and nightmares.
The very socially injected moral hypocrisies driving you to try to get rid of half of your life, to try to get you to live one-sided realities are the very sources of what makes you vulnerable to be hooked by the fantasies people sell you, and the nightmares they can use to scare you. Like those selling you eternal damnation and eternal salvation. It hooks you, makes you want to avoid one and seek the other. It forces you into survival functioning from your amygdala.
GOAL SETTING
How many times have you set a goal and thought, “I'm going to get more positives with this one, more advantage than disadvantage.” - That's the amygdala.
The amygdala is blind and it's there for survival. It's not there for thrival.
You think you're going to get all positive without a negative, but when you get there, you discover the downside.
You’re not here to get rid of half of yourself. You’re here to love both sides of yourself. And the same for the people around you.
During the Breakthrough Experience, I love to share with my students how they can live by their highest values, where they're most objective so they set goals that are more balanced and reasonable, so they get out of the cycles of repeatedly avoiding and seeking.
I show them how to use the Demartini Method to dissolve the emotional baggage that's stored in their subconscious minds that keeps them repeating these cycles.
I show them how to own the traits of the greats, their heroes and villains, so they are not in denial of their own power in life. My intention is for them to give themselves permission to do something more extraordinary in their life.
I show them how to manifest their goals, and how to stay focused on what it is that they want instead of being distracted by everybody's expectations of them.
If you set up fantasies and try to avoid nightmares in your life and try to get a one-sided life all your life, you're going to end up with self-defeat, self-depreciation.
The more you strive for a one-sided world, the more you're going to beat yourself up, think you're self-sabotaging, wonder about yourself, question, have anxiety, and self-doubts.
All those outcomes that some call negativities are just feedback mechanisms to let you know that you're pursuing a one-sided event, which is going to keep repeating its cycle.
Anytime you try to live outside your own highest values, anytime you try to pursue one-sided fantasies, you're going to keep getting these accompanying nightmares. You’re going to get smacked by the other side or pole that you're trying to avoid. This happens to help you grow and mature and to set real goals in real time frames, with real strategies that have real meaning in life.
If you want to understand why you're doing the repeating cycles, just know that there are two sides to every event in life. And trying to divide it up and separate it and get a one-sided magnet is going to be futile and the source of your repeating cycles.
I’m dedicated to teaching my attendees or students how to master and empower every area of their life, their quest for mental understanding and wisdom, their quest for vocational success and fulfillment, their financial independence quest, their relationship quest, their social leadership quest, their physical health and wellbeing quest, and their meaning and inspiration quest.
You can empower all those if you set real objectives, embrace both sides, and pursue something that's deeply meaningful. In fact, the word meaningful means it's full, it's not empty. It represents the mean between polarities.
If you infatuate with someone and minimize yourself, you have a disowned part. You're too humble to admit what you see in them is inside you, and you assume that you are missing that.
If you're resentful of someone and looking down on them and exaggerating yourself, you're too proud to admit what you see in them inside you, and you assume that you are missing that.
That missingness are the voids, they're incompletes, and those voids want to be fulfilled.
They're basically going to keep running your life until you eventually learn to love. And love is embracing both sides.
So if you want to have meaning, which is the mean between the pairs of opposites, if you want to have love in your life, if you want be inspired by your life, if you want to be grateful for your life, if you want to be certain and present in your life, then come and join me at the Breakthrough Experience so I can show you the science and the tools and principles that can help you to live a truly fulfilled life.
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