It Is My Memories That Are Not Perfect

When You Lose Your Passion in an Age of Too Much Information

Irene

My question is this. Recently I have been feeling ups and downs in my motivation at work, and a little regret, too: why did I not do that before? The times are changing so fast. The moment you have an idea, you find that someone else is already doing it on social media. We take in that information, and it makes people lose their motivation. So finding your real passion, what you really want to do, is so hard.

Caroline

With how things have changed, there is truly a bombardment from social media every day. Attention-grabbing headlines and catastrophes are what we see.

When I was working full-time jobs, I felt the pressure to perform, to produce, and that can be included in the cleaning. I am feeling this pressure, my heart is not in it, I am really exhausted, I am not experiencing the joy and the fun that I had before. That is my experience.

The wonderful thing is that our careers give us the opportunity to get to the cleaning and to work on ourselves. It is tough. It is not easy. But it is the chance to say, I am experiencing my job this way, social media this way. And we keep cleaning. As we petition for those memories to be erased, what we are experiencing changes. We are changing within, so the outside changes as well.

We are changing within, so the outside changes as well.

Where Do I Begin?

Irene

Sometimes the story is that when you grow older, your family, your work, and your relationships are set, and it is not easy to change them. I do not know whether that is true or not. But when I have that in my mind, how can we start cleaning?

Caroline

Today I was thinking about the time my husband and I bought a house. We moved outside the city and bought a house that needed both of our full-time incomes to make the mortgage. It was the biggest mortgage I had ever taken on. A couple of years after we moved in, he got sick and could not work, and we completely lost that income.

Yet I got through it. I never missed a mortgage payment, and there was always food on the table. We kept the house, we lived our lives, and the kids kept their sports. I look back on that and I just do not know how I did it. It was the cleaning that got me through. It is one of those mysteries. There is no real answer. I only knew that it was the cleaning that got me through.

It was the cleaning that got me through.

Frightening Things Still Happen When We Are Adults

Irene

After I became a parent and started working, even more frightening things began to happen. I am an adult, but this fear feels like the first time I saw a horror movie. What is going to happen? When will it end? I still feel that. I am quite shocked that even as grown-ups, we go through such frightening experiences.

Caroline

That is an expectation: the expectation that, as adults, we have resolved everything from our childhood. And we can clean with those expectations. If it is still there, it is still there. Thank you. I am not done with this either. I am still working on childhood things, and I am going to keep going.

When I suddenly stopped working full-time, I thought, who am I? I was always a person who reported to work, a person who worked with money. So much of my life was wrapped up in my job. And then I did not have to do that anymore. Now I am in a different phase of life, on a totally different path, and it is scary. I have been working on that as well. It is a blessing, and somehow Divinity has provided.

I am a widow. My husband died, so I did not have two incomes to save for retirement. All I knew was this year; I did not know about next year or the year after. So I gathered up my resources, cleaning with all the accounts and everything, and brought it all together. Today I met with a financial advisor, and it is going to be okay.

The business class really helped me to clean with that. We learned about cleaning with money, and I did processes that included all of my accounts and all of my fears. In a way, it is a gift that we have these experiences, because it is another way we can come back to ourselves and be free.

When It Feels Too Late

Irene

Many people feel that everything is too late: too late to have a good relationship, too old to start something new. But as you said, we can just clean. If we see that the purpose of living is to clean with whatever is happening, then age, roles, and responsibility do not matter, do they?

Caroline

It is so simple. It is so simple, but it is in the doing. It is a doing process. In the doing, the family comes to know what is going on and knows its roles, and we petition to Divinity. In Divinity's time. That is how we continually come back to ourselves, moment by moment.

The Days I Blamed My Parents

Caroline

For many years, I thought my parents were to blame. If they had done this, if they had done that. If my parents had not gotten divorced, if my mother had not done this. I spent so much time talking about that, and it does not change anything. It changes nothing.

So I finally got to the point of saying, wait a second. Even as an infant, I was experiencing them. So even as an infant, I am responsible. I am responsible for my experience of them. They could be absolutely perfect, but it is my memories of them that are not perfect.

It is all in me. And I think that is the beauty of Self I-Dentity: it is all within us.

It is all in me, and that is the beauty of it.

Irene

Thank you very much. I love you.