I recently asked some people in my coaching community what webinar topics they would get the most value from.  A few people came back with the theme of – how to focus on their vision when ‘everything‘ is falling apart?

Sounds like a great topic to me.  I’ve felt things falling apart so many times that I’ve lost count.  I’m sure we all feel like that at times.

So how do we focus on our vision, when everything is falling apart?

The simple answer is, we don’t!  I mean that literally.  We don’t.  And therein lies the problem.  We focus on everything falling apart.

In simple terms, we take the events that we experience in the outside world (or what I call primary experience) and make meaning of those events in our subjective (or secondary) experience.

In other words, we re-present the external world in our internal world and make up what it means. So we see, hear and feel a falling apart in our secondary experience.  We might see things going wrong in our imagination and be saying all kinds of things to ourselves (“uuugh… everything is falling apart”) which make us feel shitty.  Essentially, we make meaning – shitty meaning – based on what we perceive is happening in our experience.

Primary experience is what happens before we filter the world of undifferentiated experience through our senses.  Secondary experience is how we represent what we perceive has happened.  It’s where we distort reality and make meaning… “everything is falling apart”!

Now here’s the interesting and indisputable truth, from my lived experience of 43 years on this planet:

• At some level, things will fall apart, that’s a given
• We will think and feel that they are falling apart and therefore ‘go to pieces’
• At this point, we stop focusing on our vision and instead focus on the falling apart
• We create this response in our secondary experience – or the way we represent what we perceive has happened in primary experience
• The underlying beliefs driving our response are the issue, NOT the primary experience (what actually happened) about which we have made up meaning
• Each time we experience a falling apart (or any problem) it’s in fact THE OPPORTUNITY of a lifetime to address and transform the underlying belief (and therefore response) in order to create FREEDOM
• Thus ‘falling aparts’ are in fact opportunities to grow into the fullness of who we were born to be
• Most people don’t know how to make this transition so they settle for what Robert Quinn calls, slow death
• They continue to think that someone or something out there in the world (primary experience) is the limiter or issue, rather than their beliefs.  Or they make meaning and set up beliefs about themselves – which then limit choice and make them feel shitty

This then begs the question, how do we focus on our vision when ‘everything’ is falling apart?

The first thing is to stop trying to focus on our vision.  That’s not where the focus needs to be.  Yet!

What we have to focus on first, is the underlying belief structure (the lie for want of a better word) which is in large part creating our secondary experience.

When we can clearly see the deepest level pattern – the lie – or belief structure holding us back and be present to our distorted truth, a miraculous thing happens.

We see the real problem – our thinking, beliefs and perception of the problem – rather than the problem itself.  There are no real problems. As Einstein said, problems are generated by the way we think.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”

Albert Einstein

It reminds me of a time when I’d come to the end of my tether.  Everything was falling apart, especially in my relationship.  I was utterly stuck.  Until that is, I discovered the deepest level pattern.  I had taken up a life position as a victim.  I hadn’t seen it.  But it was true, not just in that situation or moment, but throughout my life.

So many times, I could see I got stuck, gave up hope and decided that I didn’t have a choice or know what to do; that I was essentially a victim of circumstance.  Of course I didn’t see or notice that consciously when I was in it.  When we’re in it, it can be very difficult to see.  We need a mirror to see ourselves sometimes.  Left to our own devices we believe our own bullshit more often than not.

As I sat with that truth and allowed it to settle, a deep knowing came over me.  I realised that I wasn’t really a victim but I had made myself one by unconsciously believing I was.  And then slowly, miraculously, something amazing happened.  I discovered the antidote to the lie.

The lie would be resolved when I made a decision at the highest level that I was responsible for myself and my life. That truthfully, I could choose how to respond and feel in each moment.

This could be one of the single most important decisions of our lives.  It has far reaching implications for us and the world around us.  Of course we’ll go ‘off track’ sometimes, that’s normal. But to recognise it and get back on track, that’s the work.

When we see that it is our thinking, our beliefs and our perception of the problem that are the real problem in our moment of falling apart, we see a larger truth. A deeper truth.  A bigger picture than what we were focusing on just moments before!

Once we become aware of our own bullshit, we can see the world of possibility beyond it.  And now we can begin to explore our vision once more.

But it requires a commitment to ‘doing the work’.  And by this I mean the deep internal work which ultimately sets us free from our own BS and releases us into our vision.  My mentor once said to me “Tristan, you’ve got a lot of work to do” and boy was he right!  Am I glad I’ve done and continue to do the work?  You bet!

It’s the most enlightening and liberating ‘work’ I can imagine doing and I get to share that with the world and help others transform through it.  That’s the gift and purpose of our suffering – to help others who are following in our often painful footsteps so they don’t need to suffer.  Marianne Williamson said it beautifully.  “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

A Course in Miracles says that a miracle is a shift in perception.  The moment that we chose to perceive our lives with love we can create miraculous change.

This is the work.  The paradox is that the falling apart is an essential part of a coming together at a higher level.

The ego says not so.  The soul knows better.

Love, Tristan