Choosing To Heal By Ross Bishop

I have spent most of my adult life to helping people heal their emotional wounds. What continues to confound me is how few people really want to heal. People feel inherently defective, and it is difficult to convince them that this is not permanent. Most people are convinced that this is who they are and that this is what they deserve. We are held hostage by the beliefs that are created from our deep-seated feelings of unworthiness and unlovability. We know we are not who we could be, and yet. . . . There is more, much more, to all this.

The way humans hold on to woundedness is intriguing. On the surface, it makes no sense. You would expect to see intense motivation for everyone to rid themselves of their limiting and restrictive negative influences. After all, they are an enormous source of pain. Our beliefs, driven by our fear of unworthiness, stifles our natural passion and causes us to be miserable. These things inhibit us, wreck our lives and keep us from being happy.

Some people have read books, done therapy, and gone to workshops and although these things have helped, they have provided few ultimate answers. We cannot seem to transcend our fears and limiting beliefs to find peace. We are being asked to change, to venture into an unfamiliar state, which goes against what we believe.

Why are we so powerless against these forces that so profoundly affect and, in many cases, control our lives? We are told that being happy is possible, but we find that achieving it can be difficult. We would be happy to become enlightened if it didn’t require us to go through the dark swamp of our shadow selves, and that is where the train comes off the tracks.

Most people settle into a marginally satisfying routine and get by as best they can, blaming themselves for their inadequacies and failures, filling themselves with self-condemnation and self-criticism and creating lives that fall far short of their potential.

Whether we realize it or not, we are being urged by The Creator to put our lives into a more meaningful context that provides some idea of why we are here. Putting people here to be unhappy and stifle their passion seems futile, yet that is exactly what happens. But this is not accidental. It is purposeful. We were not put here simply to be blissful but to learn the truth about ourselves, which is contrary to what we believe, and that, in turn, leads to natural happiness.

What is ironic is that people don’t want to believe that happiness is a choice, because that then makes them responsible for the outcome. And if you believe that you are unworthy or unlovable, you certainly would not want to put your worth to the test because, after all, what if your belief turned out to be true?

But, there is even more to this. To understand LIFE, we have to shift our perspective and see things from a much wider frame of reference, i.e., God’s point of view. The human outlook is simply too limited and fear-based. In that same light, becoming enlightened is perplexing largely because we do not understand it. A puzzle or a riddle is baffling until you figure it out. Life is puzzling until you see it from a broader perspective.

God created LIFE on Earth as a workshop – an environment – that would challenge us to find the truth about ourselves. He could not just give us the truth because that would have violated our free will. As a result, we have to make a choice – to decide for ourselves – that we are worthy and lovable. To restate: The purpose of LIFE is to make you realize that you are worthy so you do not have to live in fear, anxiety, and longing. And, we had to hold that truth at the deepest level possible in preparation for what was to come.

LIFE is not what most of us have taken it to be. We are enrolled in a unique learning environment with a remarkable curriculum and an unconventional learning process. Nothing about the process is accidental. Nothing is random. 

We don’t realize it, but each step of our life process has been carefully designed to nudge us to find our way home. You are being helped to find the place where your truth and happiness reside. It is a bumpy path because we resist change and also because we primarily learn through our mistakes. Do something right and you don’t learn much. But screw up and all hell breaks loose!

Consider your childhood. Everyone comes into childhood feeling inadequate and comes out feeling wounded. EVERYONE! What are the odds of that? Each young person is set up in childhood to believe the exact opposite of what they need to learn. Childhood wounding is purposeful because it sets us up to learn what we came here for, later in life. Three billion people, all engaged in the same struggle. When you see the perfection of this process you stand back in awe!

The beliefs created in childhood, with a few notable exceptions, are false. Your beliefs live in your mind and do not reach the level of real truth, even the good stuff! These mental constructs create roadblocks to our ability to be at peace because they conflict with the greater harmony of The Universe. 

Adding to the problem is that living from your false beliefs gives you an out. You don’t have to step up if you are defective. You get to duck from having to expose your vulnerable places. The thing is, those vulnerable places exist only in your mind. They are fictions created by your beliefs! And The Universe is going to pull on every one of those strings until you come into harmony.

These unfinished areas of awareness cause us to be afraid, keep us living in the shadows and prevent us from living with compassion. We generally view these as flaws in ourselves, but they only reflect where we are in our development.

About Ross Bishop: I became a healer as an outgrowth of my own need for healing. My pain and dissatisfaction with my life brought me to leave the corporate world and begin a journey to find and root out the sources of the considerable pain I carried within myself. I found western psychology to be woefully inadequate to help me and so I set out to find more meaningful answers.
 

My teachers all encouraged me after working on my own stuff to go outside myself and help others to heal, not as a humanitarian service but as a way to deepen my own healing process. I found that I had a gift for the work and that my teachers were absolutely right. Serving others is a remarkable learning process. My clients over the last 25 years have taken me to places I could not have gone on my own. I am deeply grateful for the gifts of personal growth that our work together has given me.
 

In a former life, Ross was president of an advertising agency and a communications executive for the former Northern States Power Company (NSP) in Minneapolis. After leaving NSP, with a colleague he founded Creative Power Workshops and traveled the country teaching creative thinking to advertising writers and art directors. Seeing the limitations fear placed on people’s creative passion led Ross to undertake a spiritual journey in search of answers. That journey covered many miles and several years and brought him to many teachers. Finding some answers, Ross also found he possessed a natural gift for shamanic healing. He returned to this country and conducted vision quests for spiritual pilgrims throughout the Southwestern United States. Today he concentrates his energies on writing and on an active healing and counseling practice in Santa Fe.
 

Ross Bishop’s website: https://www.rossbishop.com/