This exercise is about helping you to change,
Helping you to take responsibility for your feelings and reactions,
Helping you to identify past delusions that you have become attached to,
And helping you to love and forgive yourself,
Which in turn helps you to love and forgive others.
The Circle exercise can help us deal with triggers that exist within us that affect our emotions negatively,
Triggers that cause us pain,
Frustration,
Anger,
And other negative emotions.
Practicing this exercise helps us take our attention away from the cause of the pain,
That which we want to blame,
And focuses our attention on the trigger,
That which we are responsible for.
Whenever you're in a situation,
Or you've come out of a situation,
Where you feel that you have been wronged by another person,
For example,
His actions made you feel insecure,
Or her words made you angry,
Or you've lovingly said to your soulmate,
When you said this,
I felt this,
Yet you are incapable of letting go and you are struggling to forgive.
Try drawing a circle around yourself.
You can do it in your mind's eye,
On the screen of your imagination,
Or you can draw it on a piece of paper,
Or in the sand,
Wherever you may be,
Whatever works best for you.
Stick figures are always good because they're childlike,
And that innocent energy always brings with it a little magic.
So,
For example,
You might draw two people.
One is you,
Angry,
Hurt,
And confused,
And the other is the person who angered,
Hurt,
And confused you,
The person who you feel wronged by.
Then,
Draw a circle around yourself.
The very act of drawing the circle places the attention on you.
Then ask yourself,
What am I feeling?
Blame thoughts may prevail.
If they do,
Allow them to run their course,
But then bring yourself back to how do I feel?
For example,
You may feel humiliated,
Betrayed,
Or just so damn angry and you can't shake it,
Whatever comes up.
Then,
Erase the other person from the picture.
Literally,
Erase them so that it's just you inside the circle with your feelings.
The circle invites you to accept that you are totally responsible for your feelings,
That no one made them happen to you,
That no one is continuing to make them happen to you,
That you are experiencing the emotions,
Regardless of whether there is someone in the picture or not.
Nothing external manipulated you into feeling this way.
The trigger for your pain,
Your anger,
Your fear,
Your frustration was and always is within the circle.
Though the cause appears to be outside you,
The trigger is always within.
And then ask yourself,
Where do these feelings come from?
Be open,
Don't think too hard,
Just feel.
In doing so,
It is likely that you'll come to understand the role that you have played in the situation.
You'll come to understand that you have unresolved feelings that only you can be responsible for and that only you can heal.
For example,
Let's say you blame someone in your life for never taking you seriously and one day they say something that makes you feel like your voice isn't worthy and you get angry and you snap.
Or perhaps you have repeated encounters on the road where reckless drivers make you angry and all too often you become overwhelmed by your feelings and you get angry and you snap.
With this exercise,
You will come to understand that whenever a trigger is pulled,
Whenever you feel like someone else has made you lose control or disrupted your peaceful center,
That you are both the trigger puller and the gun,
That you are always responsible for shooting off and that to blame someone else is simply an avoidance technique,
A stubborn refusal to explore yourself,
To go within,
To change.
Deep down,
You know that you,
Your higher self,
Has attracted that person or those people into your life to help you see a part or parts of yourself that are most in need of healing.
And healing always means change.
We can choose to heal and become empowered beings who are 100% responsible for our experience of the world.
Or we can choose to live in pain,
Anger,
Fear,
Where we are only partly responsible for ourselves,
Where we choose instead to blame others for our experience of the world.
It's paradoxical and egoic to pat ourselves on the back when we feel in control of our emotions but to point fingers and blame when we feel out of control.
This is not about refuting the role of an abuser or the role of a loved one who has temporarily hurt you.
It's about getting in touch with your feelings and connecting those feelings to your present day experiences.
We are taking them out of the picture so that we can see clearly inside ourselves what needs to be healed.
And so,
If we return to the two examples,
If you're someone who feels like you don't have a voice and a comment has made you feel unworthy,
Though there are innumerable possibilities.
Perhaps in childhood every time you spoke,
An adult put you down.
Or perhaps the role models closest to you,
Your parents' guardians,
Simply had low self-esteem.
And so,
Through this exercise,
You may come to realize why you have attracted someone into your life to pull that trigger,
Because it's time for you to cultivate self-respect,
To learn that you have a voice,
To practice self-love.
The issue isn't the other person.
The issue is inside you.
And if you're someone who rages on the road,
Who shakes their fists at drivers and shouts obscenities,
Perhaps you are looking for an avenue,
Any avenue,
To release a rage that developed during childhood,
A time when you had no control over threatening,
Irrational people.
And perhaps within the circle that you have been brave enough to draw around yourself,
You come to realize that that rage has become habitual,
Comforting even,
Because back then it was the only way you knew how to protect yourself.
But now it's time for you to cultivate a new relationship with trust,
To develop new loving ways of protecting yourself,
To practice self-love.
If you're ever really struggling with the exercise to separate yourself from the person that you blame,
If you can't stop seeing them as the gun holder and the trigger puller,
Try visualizing your hand over theirs,
Aiming toward the part or parts of you that are most in need of attention,
Love,
And healing.
In a way,
They are getting your attention for you.
They are your guardian angels,
Albeit in a slightly challenging form,
Guiding you towards illumination.
There's a beautiful quote from Mike Dooley,
Whosoever may torment you,
Harass you,
Confound you,
Or upset you,
Is a teacher,
Not because they're wise,
But because you seek to become so.
This exercise may promote a fast,
Easy realization.
It may become a go-to tool whenever you're struggling to forgive and let go.
But often it's hard,
And it takes a little longer,
Because even though logically you may realize what it is inside you that needs to change,
You're still so hurt by the person you want to blame.
Or sometimes it may be something about yourself that is difficult to accept.
For example,
Sometimes our inability to let go of anger or frustration towards another person is a reflection of our need to control that person.
And for many of us,
It can be difficult to accept that we may be a controlling person.
So for whatever reason you may be struggling with,
Be patient and kind to yourself,
And try to be patient and kind to the other person.
You will come to understand that it's less about your need to forgive them,
And more about your need to forgive yourself,
To forgive yourself for holding onto pain,
Because it's the holding onto pain,
The not being able to let go that puts us in the role of the inflictor,
The abuser.
Our inability to let go becomes a form of self-abuse.
Drawing a circle around ourselves can help us to see this.
The feelings that lurk beneath the surface often stem from a conscious or unconscious decision to live our lives in one of two states or two parallel universes.
Love or fear?
Fear is a natural response to a perceived threat.
It's an instinctual emotion that is transient in nature.
Unfortunately,
The human ego loves fear.
It munches on it all day.
And without its go-to snack,
It imagines it can't survive,
So it convinces us that without it,
We too may not survive.
And so we become slaves to it.
We hang onto it when it's unwarranted.
We recreate it where it doesn't exist.
We go looking for it in every corner and every crevice,
Because we fear not knowing who will be without it.
The fear becomes our lens,
Our perspective.
To a degree,
It becomes comfortable.
And for some,
It becomes a version of happiness.
But it's not happiness.
Happiness comes from a love perspective.
When we're living in the universe of love,
Everything changes.
Our old fear-based perspective shatters.
And everything in the world shines.
Every moment becomes a miraculous adventure,
An opportunity to love,
Be kind,
Laugh,
Learn,
Grow and heal.
And the more we heal through love,
The more we stop attracting holographic recreations of the past.
If you feel oppressed,
Humiliated or worthless,
It's a divine indication that your perspective is fear-based.
We can't be oppressed by another when we're free from fear.
We can't be humiliated by another when we take pride in ourselves.
We can't be made to feel worthless when we truly respect ourselves.
Most often,
Within the circle,
A realization occurs where we accept that there is something inside us that is fear-based,
That is in need of love.
And to transform it,
All we have to do is to be willing to see the situation through a loving lens,
To learn through love.
If you're still struggling within the circle,
Try repeating this mantra by Gabrielle Bernstein.
I am willing to see this differently.
I am willing to learn through love.
We are only ever in control of ourselves.
We can only ever be responsible for ourselves.
Next time you feel yourself negatively react to a person or situation,
Draw a circle around yourself.
Let go of your ego,
Your fear,
And be open to a new loving perspective.
Ultimately,
This circle exercise teaches us to understand ourselves and others better,
And to love ourselves and others more,
So that we can progress towards becoming the most amazing versions of us and the most amazing version of humanity that we can be.
