Posts

Different Is Not Wrong: The Missing Skill in Most Relationships

At the heart of every relationship is a simple and often challenging truth: the other person is not you. They do not think like you, perceive the world like you, or experience life through your nervous system. They are living inside an entirely different inner universe.

Different is not wrong.

What often feels threatening is not the difference itself, but the discomfort it stirs in us when our expectations are not met.

As a mentor to couples, I often discover that the dissonance people experience in their relationships stems from an inability to accept their differences. Many react on autopilot in a familiar pattern that goes something like this:
“I’m not happy. It must be your fault. Let me tell you what you’re doing wrong so you can change and I can finally feel better.”

The next time you notice yourself judging your partner, or anyone else, as wrong, try pausing and exploring the moment through a different lens. Consider the following reflections to see if you can gain value from the experience rather than polarizing into a right versus wrong stance:

  • Different does not automatically mean wrong.
  • In what way does this difference feel uncomfortable for me?
  • What am I trying to accomplish by making the other person wrong?
  • How am I responding, and why?
  • Can I acknowledge that their experience is as valid for them as mine is for me?
  • What is the most loving response available to me in this moment?

Relationships are not static. Each of us is a living ecosystem, moving through space and time in a constant state of change. Being in relationship with another ecosystem challenges us to create a partnership where difference is not a threat, but a source of expansion and shared growth.

A healthy partnership asks us to honor both our individuality and our shared experience, without sacrificing one for the other.

Rather than polarizing into blame when something feels off, couples can shift toward shared responsibility for the quality of the relationship. Instead of finger-pointing, there is an invitation to turn toward one another and ask together, What do we need to do here for this to work for both of us?

My Couples Mentoring work is not about convincing anyone to change or deciding who is right. It is an invitation to look honestly at how your relationship is functioning and to work together to create a path forward that truly celebrates your oneness while honoring your differences.

If this way of approaching relationship resonates with you, I invite you to visit my website to learn more about how I support couples in doing this work together.

 

 

/by

The Game of Life

What Game Are You Really Playing?

The Origins of the Metaphor of Life As a Game

Since the 1600s, great thinkers have used the metaphor of life as a game or performance. Shakespeare famously wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” This suggests that real people are like actors assuming alternative identities enacting various dramatic, tragic, and comedic scenarios.

Fast forward to 1925, and metaphysical teacher Florence Scovel Shinn gave the metaphor new spiritual significance in The Game of Life and How to Play It. She suggested that life isn’t random but a purposeful simulation through which souls evolve in a cosmic classroom of sorts. Expanding on this idea, some perceive life on Earth to be a simulation through which souls learn by assuming identities that are not ultimate truths but part of a temporary human experience. In this sense  life is intended as a journey in consciousness through which souls learn, evolve, and awaken.

Life As a Game

Much like a game, the journey of a lifetime involves choices, risks, outcomes, and a degree of chance. Indeed, we each make choices that have consequences and inform the possibilities to come.  The game of life is a temporary creative process with a beginning and an end. But, unlike a game, our life, once initiated is not optional. We will live it one way or another, even if we choose to end it prematurely.

What is the Nature of Your Game

If life is a game, what kind are you playing?

Are you:

  • Fighting for survival?

  • Competing for scarce resources?

  • Trying to make your dreams come true?

  • Seeking to expand your conscious awareness?

  • Awakening spiritually?

How would you describe the game of life that you are playing?

 

Your perception determines your playing field.

The game you see is the game you play. Some games are built around fear and lack. Others are quests for love, awakening, or understanding. Some perceive the games themselves to be hierarchical as in  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He theorizes that we must meet our basic survival needs before we can entertain other higher pursuits. As we achieve each level of desire and expertise, we gain the ability to perceive and participate in higher games. But not all of us will. Many are content to live life within the purview of the mind and ego pursuing the temporary sating of perceived material and emotional wants and needs.

 Or perhaps these games are multidimensional, where several “games” play out at once.

Multidimensional Games

I have come to experience myself as a soul pursuing a spiritual learning agenda while living life through the identity of Judith Johnson.

It has been my experience that I participate to some degree in multiple games simultaneously and to varying degrees. But I also notice an overarching trajectory whereby I have been focusing more and more of my attention on awakening my spiritual awareness and the process of transcending into soul awareness and beyond.

This typically requires inquiry beyond what is directly observable or measurable by the mind and senses. It delves into fundamental metaphysical questions about reality, existence, knowledge, the nature of being, consciousness, space, time, and causality.

As I elevate my game, what changes is largely a function of what I perceive to be real and what I value. For example, if I were a pickpocket seeing an angel, I would see pockets and if I were a critic I would look for something to criticize. But as I come to know God, other pursuits lose their pull.

Our difference in perception explains why people at different levels of awareness often misunderstand each other.

One interesting aspect of this multi-level game is that the more restricted our perceptual capabilities are the less we can comprehend or understand someone functioning from a different level of awareness. For example, Joe experiences life through his ego and denies the existence of God because he is looking at the world and asking, “how can a god let this kind of pain and suffering exist?” Through Joe’s eyes, Sam who speaks of experiencing God’s presence and love in his life appears naive. But Joe is making a common error. He is assuming that what he sees is reality itself rather than an interpreted reality perceived from a particular point of view.

One of life’s great lessons is that thinking something doesn’t make it true.

Another is that we assume that others perceive the same thing that we do.

So, What Game Are You Playing?

What do you value in your life? What do you believe is the purpose of your life? What are you seeking to experience or achieve?

Take a moment and ask yourself:

“How would I describe the game of life I’m playing?”
“What deeper game might be calling to me?”

When we begin to ask such questions, we move from being pawns of circumstance to conscious players in a sacred journey.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Do you know someone who might benefit from reading this article?  If so, please share it with them. 

/by
,

Souls Onboard

 

Recognizing the Sacred in Every Life We Encounter

            In aviation and maritime communication, the term “souls onboard” is used during emergencies to communicate the number of living human beings onboard a vessel. It’s not just a headcount. It’s a recognition of lives, of beings, of souls. The language reminds us that those on board aren’t cargo or statistics. They are people. Whole lives. Each one sacred.

What If We Used This Lens in Our Lives

What if we moved through the world aware that everywhere we go, we are surrounded by souls onboard—fellow travelers navigating the skies of their own lives?

Every human being you pass on the street, meet in a meeting, sit beside on the bus, or scroll past online is a soul onboard this great collective journey we call life. And like you, they are trying to make sense of it. Some are stumbling. Some are shining. All are worthy.

It’s easy to forget this when we’re overwhelmed, annoyed, or afraid. It’s easy to reduce people to their behaviors, opinions, or affiliations. We mentally divide the world into “us” and “them.” We are inclined to categorize others based on whether they agree with us. We value some and avoid others. We believe some deserve kindness and others do not.

A Call to Recognition

If we are truly spiritual beings, as so many of us claim to believe, then we cannot make exceptions. The soul is the essence of every person, regardless of how they show up. And while not all behaviors are acceptable, every being is a soul onboard.

This is not a call to spiritual bypassing or naïve tolerance. It’s a call to recognition. It is a reminder that behind every face is a complex, feeling, sacred being, shaped by stories we cannot see.

What Would Shift in Our Lives If We Truly Saw This?

  • What if the person who cut you off in traffic wasn’t just a jerk but a soul in distress?
  • What if the relative who pushes all your buttons was seen as a soul still finding their way through their own distorted perceptions and wounds?
  • What if we experienced our disturbances with others as an invitation to practice reverence, not just reaction?
  • What if we went so far as to see that person who irritates us or the one we fear as Jesus or Buddha testing our ability to love and honor each other?

We don’t need a spiritual emergency to remind us of our shared humanity. We can bring that awareness into each ordinary day.

 

Here we are, all of us,

doing the best we know how.

Some of us rising. Some of us hurting.

Some of us lonely. Some behaving badly.

Each of us trying to love, to be loved.

To belong, to matter.

We may not understand each other. We may not always agree. But we are traveling together.

So let’s tread gently. Speak kindly. Extend compassion and respect not just to those we love, but to those we don’t yet understand.

Every soul counts.

Every soul is worthy.

And every soul is onboard.

 

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Do you know someone who might benefit from reading this article?  If so, please share it with them. 

 

/by

Leaving the Past Behind

Are you keeping your past alive in the present? Or have you harvested its lessons and learned from it? We all have scars from our past. But what do we do with them now? That’s a really important question.

In mentoring clients, I typically find that their current distress mirrors unresolved upsets from the past. For example, Ellen who was never able to feel loved by her father. She has now been repeatedly drawing men into her with whom she also failed to experience love. Why did this happen? Think of it as a karmic pattern that is seeking healing.

Your life will continue to replicate an unresolved situation until you are able to neutralize the state of consciousness from which you relate to it.

Ellen was caught in a pattern in which she had convinced herself that she was fundamentally unlovable. As I observed her, I noticed that she was turned off by men who liked her. Instead, she was attracted to those who gave her no encouragement and treated her badly.

Could it be that she was simply staying in her comfort zone? This is counter-intuitive but typical. She knew herself as a woman who was rejected by the men whose affection she wanted. That became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

She didn’t know how to be a woman loved by men. Through her eyes as a child, she recognized that her father didn’t show her love. But she had falsely concluded that the reason was because she was unlovable. As a child, she could not see that he had difficulty expressing his caring for others. She carried that unchallenged belief forward into adulthood until we were able to expose it and release it together.

She came to see that the faulty conclusion of her past was inhibiting her from experiencing love in the present. It was wonderful to watch her realize that she had the power to change how she saw herself. She began taking pride in herself and replacing her old, self-rejecting belief with appreciation for her own goodness. As a result the affection of good men became desirable to her.

She stepped out of the belief that she was unlovable. She left the past behind. I asked her what life lesson this had taught her. She told me she learned to pay attention to her own beliefs about herself when in situations that were difficult for her to see if she was sabotaging herself.

I had a similar situation during a recent weight loss journey. I reached a plateau and couldn’t get the scale to move despite following all the rules. In observing myself, I realized the issue was emotional. In listening to my self-talk, I kept hearing, “I don’t know her.” When I explored this, I recognized that I was afraid to go past that particular number on the scale. In my mind it represented a level of success with which I was not comfortable. I knew how to be almost successful, but I didn’t know how to go for and get the brass ring of success. It took several months before I was able to break through this barrier. Now I am learning new life skills and a level of self-trust that was not apparent and therefore not available to me before.

When we become too familiar with failure, we have to push through our own resistance to the unfamiliar territory of success.

Leaving the past behind often requires that we recognize the ways we sabotage ourselves out of fear of moving into the unknown. Being good at failing and being disappointed doesn’t mean you can’t also be really good at success and exceeding your dreams. It simply requires a new point of view.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Do you know someone who might benefit from reading this article?
If so, please share it with them. 

/by

A Celebration of Value & Symbolic Wedding Rituals | Judith Johnson Wedding Officiant on Chronogram

I recently spoke with Chronogram on exploring unique ways couples can incorporate their deeper values into their wedding celebrations. Read the full article here.

/by