Jumbled life lessons

QUESTION: Masters, I sometimes find it hard to separate the voice of my intuition from the voices of my ego, my mind and my feelings. Lately I’ve had a hard time opening up and letting my guard down. Falling in love makes me feel petrified with fear of potential heartache, betrayal and humiliation and makes me want to run away. It brings with it the difficulty to trust another person and to let go of the need of being in control all the time. How can I learn to trust and stop dragging my past hurt with me and to give a relationship a chance to work without being too dominating or the opposite – cold and reserved? ~Karin, Finland

ANSWER: You are in the midst of a cyclonic maelstrom of emotions originating from your life lessons. Your concern about the origin of your voices stems from not wanting to have to listen to anything that is approaching you. Your life is a mass of fears and doubts and nothing seems friendly.

You first have to examine the lessons: betrayal, abandonment, lack of confidence and respect for yourself, all overlaid by the sense that no one is ever telling you the truth. You feel everyone is out to hurt you and that is what you deserve. You put up barriers so that no one can get through; the barriers may be indifference, fear, or striking out to chase people away so you don’t have to deal with them.

Your solution to all these problems is accepting who you are. Accepting that you are as good as everyone else, and people can hurt you only when you allow them to affect you. You are constantly living in the past, redoing all your past experiences and believing that nothing has changed. And nothing has changed because you have not allowed it to. You are clinging to what you have known, and you fear that the unknown will be worse than the past.

Within the power that you possess is the ability to bring to you what you need to experience. Since you have already lived through all these hurtful things, you don’t have to go through them again. Stand up and acknowledge that they happened and you learned you don’t need them in your life, so you can now move on to something else.

Create what you desire to be your future. The voices you talk about are your lessons coming to you through ego, higher self, and acquaintances’ words. Make the controlling voices yours. Decide what you want to see and do. When you deviate from the plan, tell yourself to return to it. Believe you are the creator and manager.