Note: Writing in a journal can help your process greatly. 1. Identify your Big Goals for your Life: Your Human Journey, from Ego back to Soul 2. What do you need to do and be to feel good about yourself at the end of your life? II. THE NOW: Look at your immediate situation NOW, in the present time. 1. Identify the Behavior, Habit, Attitude, etc. that you want to focus on, that you would feel better if you could change this. 2. Identify the pleasure, the payoffs, the benefits of the existing behavior. 3. Identify the price (s): the negative consequences. What is the price you are paying for this behavior? 4. Put Together #2 and #3- To get the pleasure/price ratio. Look at the whole picture, not just the pleasure. Get honest with yourself. In reality–It’s a package deal. It’s a tradeoff. With time, the price tends to get higher. The pleasure has a cost. 5. The Obstacles: what’s stopping you, what’s sabotaging you? Steps 1-5, give you some idea of what will motivate you and what will sabotage you as you take steps towards change. It helps to have these in conscious awareness. III. Ready to go to the 4×4 Journey Map and the 4 Tools Now, with this preparation, we are ready to use The Human Journey 4×4 Map to guide and give some insight, ideas, and direction. Note: Studying the map first might also help you answer the above questions to get more clarity and focus. Ask yourself these questions: 1. Which row best fits my current problem right now? (Am I grieving, resisting surrendering, dealing with growth, or in the area of creativity and service? Write this in your journal. ) 2. Now look at each of the four squares in that row and identify which square(s) best fit your situation. (Is this problem physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual? Write this in your journal.) 3. Now switch over to Tool #1: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and identify what level of the pyramid your focus issue is in. 4. Now go to #2 Tool: The Map of Consciousness Tool (Note: first reading the link that describes this consciousness map will help understand it) Look first in the Emotions column. Find the word that best matches. Look to the right on that same row to the Process column. Does the word there fit too? Then look at the other words to the left on that same row. Do these words fit? Find the row that comes closest to what you are feeling can give specific insights into what you are dealing with. Make a note of these in your journal. IV. Now journal, reflect, put pieces together. Go back to the Journey 4×4 map. Look at each of the four squares and how they impact and influence your problem area. This entire process is a way of getting insights into what you want to change, to then be able to set goals and take action to resolve that problem. It is a step by step process, where you are identifying what your obstacles and strengths and motivations are. It also helps see and face truths vs. self-deceptions that block progress. Note: You will notice that as you complete one cycle, you may find that another one opens up. For example, when I started mine in the surrender row and I was working through that, it then opened up layers in the grief row. So, referring back to the 4×4 Journey Map and the 4 Tools may happen again and again because our lives are cyclical, not linear. And our learnings are like a spiral, with layer building upon layer. This 4×4 map and the tools may feel awkward at first, but they will become familiar as you work with them. Posting in the forums will also help. I will be guiding all of us through this and giving guidance, reflections, sharing, encouragement and answering questions as well. V. Posting on the forums on each specific topic is where we can share insights, ideas, aha’s, post, discuss, encourage, and support each other towards positive change. The 4×4 Journey map and four tools simply help get things into sharper awareness. The map then can surface options and choices to problem solve. It can suggest behavior changes. Those changes can move us toward more freedom and empowerment, more soul energy, freeing us our Ego’s traps. Awareness gives us choice and power, freeing up blocked areas that might be holding us down. Sharing adds motivation, clarity and learning. It also improves our long term success at strengthening and sustaining our new changes. PERSONAL APPLICATION OF THE MAP, TOOLS AND STEPS The preparation that I had done at an earlier time. I. The Context 1. My Big Goal for my life: My personal lifetime goal is to live from my Highest Self in ALL areas of my like: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, having them ALL in alignment. 2. To feel good about myself at the end of my life: Serve and empower others from that place of my wholeness, to support others in their Healing, empowerment, and creativity and service from their Highest Self. I want to help bring the energies of Heaven to Earth. “We want you to realize that this Lodge has a fine purpose. Its purpose lies far into the future – that of bringing to the earth a standard of life in harmony with infinite love…to introduce to humanity the truth of God within, the light within.” ~ White Eagle II. THE NOW: I am going to use a personal example from January 1, 2019, that was very true at that time and now is in a very different place, thanks to lots of change and focused energy in some of my daily patterns. 1. My problem was: my unhealthy eating habits. I felt excellent about all of my growth in the areas of emotional, mental, spiritual growth, BUT my habits around food were NOT in alignment with the rest of me. 2. The pleasure: My rewards had payoffs. I would feel momentarily good. Pleasure fit in with others socializing. Indulging met WHAT I WANT, my desires. My thought was I don’t need self-control. Pleasure creates escape, numbs pain, avoids bad feelings, can be impulsive. Pleasure is the easiest way, takes no effort or energy. Quick pleasures give quick relief, quick enjoyment. 3. The price (s): the negative consequences were to my health, my self-esteem, my integrity, my inner peace. I felt stuck, helpless, caught in a trap, by my weight and my appearance. The pleasures were temporary. The pleasures added to problems. They didn’t fix problems other than the momentary illusion. The pleasures created internal dissonance, discomfort, embarrassment. I was not proud of myself. The result didn’t match the rest of me and was not what my Highest Self wanted. 4. Put together #2 and #3–the pleasure / price ratio. I realized the price was getting higher and higher. Huge awareness and facing of Reality-facing TRUTH-I couldn’t have BOTH. It was an EITHER/OR package deal of tradeoffs. My choice. My consequences. 5. The Obstacles: what’s stopping me, what’s sabotaging me A. I had mixed feelings about making changes. I didn’t want to give up what I enjoyed, lots of sugar stuff: especially bakery “foods,” desserts, pizza, processed, packaged snack foods). I got pleasure those foods I had resistance to losing that pleasure, yet inner conflict because of not wanting the negative consequences either. I was in a double-bind. B. Fantasy thinking: I want BOTH—eat the way I was eating but have different consequences. I was using magical thinking, not based in truth. III. Ready to go to the 4×4 Journey Map and the 4 Tools 1. Identify which row matches my problem: The Surrender, row. NOT WANTING “TO GIVE UP,” to lose what I enjoyed. Resistance. Mixed feelings. 2. Which boxes: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual All 4 of them have parts that fit. Ouch. Interesting. 3. Tool #1 –Maslow’s: primarily bottom level and next one, but my situation involved ALL of them. Insight. No wonder this has been such a challenging one to clear out and heal. I have worked on this for years and years, with some temporary success, then back to the same old behaviors. I was never willing to step in with both feet and give it all I had. 4. Tool #2–Map of Consciousness: Words and lines that fit me: desire #125 level of vibration, craving, enslavement, disappointment, denying. OUCH—This was putting in my face the price I was paying for all the specific consequences. Clearer awareness of my choices: I can have health OR I can have the temporary pleasure of sugar “food.” I could have integrity, and internal alignment OR I could have the fleeting pleasure of sugar “foods.” That was MY CHOICE. Yet, it didn’t feel like my choice, and I felt controlled by the intense cravings of my body for the sugary stuff and the pizza stuff, etc. I loved Italian food. 5. Tool #3 – Jose’s chart: Obstacle–especially the first column: self-destructive–greed, but also self-deprecation–martyr, and stubbornness on the last column. Truths/deceptions. Goals and self-awareness from this: honesty uncomfortable. Need to face truth head-on. Face reality and not deny or avoid facing the truth. I can see my illusional/delusional thinking. My thinking was addictive, denying, minimizing and rationalizing. 6. Tool # 4 — Medicine Wheel: What words resonate for strengths to pull on–Healing, south, self-love. Truth from the West–self-compassion. The bonus of the diagram of Serenity Prayer. I’ve had it in both columns, can and also cannot control. I would make progress for as much as eight months, then lose it again with either special occasions, trips, or with life stresses. My diet felt out of control physically and emotionally, but cognitively and spiritually, I knew that I was making self-destructive choices. How in the world to make permanent changes??? I felt depressed, hopeless, discouraged, defeated, but with medical issues now increasing, including diagnosis of diabetes after being pre-diabetic for several years, I was feeling desperate. I HAVE to find a solution. I HAVE to change this. I am destroying my health. The medical consequences of diabetes are SO high, including possible blindness. I grew up with my father’s blindness. I couldn’t live with myself with my KNOWINGLY doing behaviors that, with time, could/would lead to that outcome. NO! Just NOT an option. 7. Bonus Tool: Ah, the Serenity Prayer. When in denial and discouragement with the physical addiction in control, I would put this in the CANNOT control side. Then, with courage and learning, I would move it over to the CAN control side. The Reality? It is some of both. I CANNOT control the hardwiring that I inherited with how my body reacts to sugar, flour and processed foods. So, yes, if I eat that stuff, my body responds in an addictive way, and I have lost control, the addiction is in charge. However, I CAN control what goes into my mouth. So, I have control over whether I let the addiction monster go dormant or whether I feed it and keep it active. So, it IS possible to control, but not easy. The BLE ( “Bright Line Eating” (BLE) by Susan Pierce Thompson – See Note this page for more on BLE) program gave me the steps and the tools and the support community to have the knowledge and courage to make changes in my relationship to food. Now the addiction part is stilled, sleeping, dormant, AS LONG AS I DONT FEED IT. (see “The Story of Two Wolves” at the bottom of this linked page). The addiction is always there, with those brain grooves in my brain, if I CHOOSE to set it off again. The change Up to me. Tradeoff. I choose health and integrity, rather than pleasure of the moment with very high consequences, which means my choices about what goes into my mouth has to line up with that day by day, meal by meal. Giving up the addictions meant giving up the ego level of desire, in the moment, for the Authentic Self-level of joy for the long term. IV. Now journal, reflect, put pieces together. Go back to the Journey 4×4 map. Look at each of the four squares and how they impact (in my case, the resistance to surrender). 1.Physical: not able to stop eating sugar, flour, processed foods despite them being destructive for my health and self-esteem. I FINALLY FACED THE TRUTH; THIS IS TRULY AN ISSUE THAT HAS REACHED ADDICTION LEVEL. This is not just an issue of “I love sugar.” I finally admitted to myself, this is ADDICTION. Addiction is when you do something, it causes a problem, AND YOU KEEP DOING IT. That means whatever you are doing is in CONTROL, not you. Giving up addiction was a HUGE STEP. The necessary step. It came down to being honest with myself. Leaving my fantasy, wishful, thinking behind, and facing TRUTH head-on. 2. Emotional: using unhealthy foods to change my feelings, (an indication of addiction) Consequences: embarrassing, shame, frustration, not being able to control this. Truth-this is addiction. 3. Mental: holding onto false beliefs, letting my con-artist inner voice let me rationalize, justify, minimize, make excuses. Not being honest with myself. Truth is they are tradeoffs —truth is they are an EITHER/OR. I can have junk food, OR I can have my health, inner peace, self-esteem and integrity. Truth: can’t have BOTH. That is NOT reality, even though I’d like to think so. Taking my power back from my Ego, lower self to my Soul, Higher Authentic Self. 4. Spiritual: I need to do this with the truth about the addiction, truth about the consequences, truth about right thinking, and to do it with self-love and self-compassion. Give up lower stuff for higher stuff. 5. Now do to #3 Tool: The Jose Stevens Personessence Chart (Note: there is a link to the booklet that explains the chart to help for understanding) Look first at the Obstacle row. Look across and see which word or words come the closest to fitting. Look at the positive and negative qualities of that above and below the word. Think of the top quality as your soul quality/Truth. Your Ego is more the bottom quality/Deception. Identify which words/qualities fit for you at this time. This information can help you in setting goals and focus on what you want to work on to heal/change. 6. Now go to #4 Tool: The Medicine Wheels Look through this page and each wheel. Now you are putting the specifics back together into a bigger picture to get more context. This page can help you identify some strengths and motivations to help you in your process. There is also a link to more Wheels, that may be helpful. BONUS: Tool link takes you to the Serenity Prayer chart. Which column does your focus fit in? Cannot control, can control? Be honest with yourself. This one can be tricky. Conclusion: I had to face reality/truth; this is an addiction, hence needs total abstinence of sugar, flour. (Flour was a new one for me. It turns out processed flour acts just like sugar in the body). When stopping processed foods, the body goes through withdrawal and then settles down. The addictions go dormant unless they get triggered again. Once I was honest with myself about my body’s physical hard wiring, family history, and the emotional conditioning from childhood and the irrational beliefs and thinking that the Ego wants to hang on to. I had to acknowledge how the Ego distorts and supports unhealthy behaviors and choices and keeps the addiction in control. V. Reflect and post, ON The Vision Holders I would use the Surrender Forum (In my case, I found an eating program that had community website support –see below). Others were struggling with problems like mine, the Surrender Theme. On that website, persons share awareness, insights, encouragement and successes. They gather information and resources that will support them in this process. They get support making these changes toward success, new behaviors and understandings. When this feels complete, it may then unfold to another level. For example, after surrendering and making progress, then feelings of grief started surfacing. So, then I could return to this and do all the same steps all over again, dealing with another layer in the process, this time from a grieving perspective. Layers build upon layers, which is why change is more of a cyclical process, rather than linear. NOTE: In January of 2019, in my desperation of having to make a change, I googled and searched and eventually found a program that was a perfect match for me, called “Bright Line Eating” (BLE) by Susan Pierce Thompson. She has a book by the same name. Susan (SPT) Pierce Thompson also has several YouTube VLOGS online that go into the science of what is happening in the body with sugar and flour consumption. VERY interesting and enlightening. It all made so much sense. I jumped into that program with total commitment, giving it my all. It is possible, but not easy. Addiction is “managed” day by day, not cured. The brain develops “grooves,” like rivers, for addiction. The BLE process helps make them “dry river beds” and stops the fuel that can re-activate the grooves. Then the addiction “saboteur” can go dormant but is always there to awaken again and take over if the sugar or flour gets back into the body. BLE creates four Bright Lines: no sugar, no flour, no processed foods, three spaced meals a day with no snacking, and weighing the food servings. It had just the right combination of structure, guidance, and yet some flexibility. The steps and online community were and are outstanding. After the first 2-3 months of withdrawal, it gets more comfortable, and the rewards start coming in BIG TIME. BLE brought me peace of mind, increased energy, improved moods, deep new supportive friendships, improved health, the feeling of integrity, and self-esteem. The rewards make it worth it. Food now is about nutrition and fuel for the body, AND meals are delightful and tasty. The taste buds change after a couple of months. Previously bland tasting foods become amazing. A month after me, my husband joined in, too, with also excellent results. He has lost 70 lbs and is so much happier and healthier. I am so proud of him. It helps we are doing this together, supporting each other, and having a home environment that is free of all junk “food.” It has been a shock to learn about how the food “INDUSTRY” is so destructive for our health for the sake of greed and corporate profits. So many of their practices should be illegal. So, my complete joy, is that I am now amazingly, in delight, in alignment, making healthy choices, with all four areas of my life: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. A lifetime of longing has come true. I have my health back, and my integrity and inner peace, where I wanted them. So, hurrah! I know there was help from the Higher Realms in all of this. The timing of this being in place and established, before COVID-19 hit, was not “accidental.” I can see, and I sensed that my Spirit was preparing me for something, that this was part of my preparation from a higher level to be able to respond to my Soul’s Calling once all four areas of my life moved forward and were ready. Best of all, this has freed me up to make it possible at this time to listen and respond to my Soul’s Calling to do The Vision Holders project in response to COVID -19, and this momentous time in the history of the earth and all life upon it. I am soooo very grateful for BLE, helping me reach my life goals. BLE made it possible to finally get that one last piece into place and alignment, so it is not an anchor holding me back. Now, everything is going forward, from my Authentic Higher Self, in all areas of my life. What a huge blessing! A lifetime dream hascome true! I am so grateful to so many for helping make this occur. I know pure joy and fulfillment. Now I can serve from my fullest self and Highest Self, be a model, and example of stepping into my full empowerment. What a blessing. My heart feels full. My soul is happy! I feel like a miracle has been accomplished. But, it all starts from inside. I hope that this website and the tools and steps offered here will help YOU, in taking responsibility for YOUR life, to heal, to move to wholeness, and then to Holiness, to know the joy and fulfillment of creativity and service. In your service, Namaste. Caterina
Steps for Making Positive Changes in Your Life
To Start:
I. The context: (helps to have this, but isn’t necessary to be able to focus on the current problem)
