I see this constantly with people I’m counseling. They carry illusions and delusions about life, about themselves, about their partners, their co-workers, friends and family.

Sometimes it sounds like this:

Oh, they really love me. They really do. They’ve just got so much going on right now.

Sometimes it sounds like this:

That person is ruining my life. That person is making everything so hard for me. That person is working against me constantly.

Both are pictures we’ve painted.  The images we think we see are the projections of our beliefs.

We don’t often know what the truth is. Yet if we’re feeling challenged, if we’re not at peace, the truth is seeking to burst through our awareness.

If we’ll allow it.

Here’s what I’ve come to know about the pictures we paint. They become our complete and total locked-in belief about things. Then we can’t see anything else except what affirms the picture.

There can be all kinds of signs that refute it, and we’ll interpret every one of them as affirming it.

Until we’re willing to really love.

Love dissolves and resolves the attachments we have to the picture we painted.

Without tremendous effort. That’s the mechanism. That’s the whole thing.

Not analysis. Not figuring out who was right. Not winning the argument with ourselves about whether they really love us or really don’t.  All of that is really just self-sabotage.

Love.

The picture is our interpretation and the meaning we’ve made of it things based on our beliefs.

Our beliefs are the lens we’re looking at them through.  That’s where all the pain comes from.

The escape isn’t to paint a better picture. The escape is to put the brush down.

I painted these false images for years. About my partners. About my colleagues. About my family. About myself. Each one got more detailed, more locked-in, more concretized.

Then I started practicing one thing. I’d notice the picture, and I’d hand it over.

Higher Holy Spirit Self, I see I’ve painted a picture here. I’m willing to release my attachment to it. I’d like to see what’s REALLY going on.

That’s the prayer.

This chiseling away of our attachment to what we’ve painted is exactly the work we do together, week after week, in my Masterful Living Program. It’s where I watch the scales fall from people’s eyes.  And Peace is revealed.

We’re putting the brush down.  We’re letting the lens of false beliefs fall away.

Sometimes when we become overwhelmed and upset by what we think we see we find ways to drown out the intensity of our reactions.  We fall into various forms of self-medication and self-sabotage.  I know a lot about that.  And that’s why I created this program to rise up out of that pain.

End My Self-Sabotage 6-Week Program begins Sunday, July 26th. Self-sabotage is designed to slow down our spiritual growth. But what if I told you that we can dissolve that pattern? When you recognize the pattern, you can interrupt it. And when you interrupt it with Love instead of willpower, everything changes. I used to struggle with self-medication and other forms of self-sabotage, but that’s behind me now – if you can relate – let’s do it together! Click here to learn more.

LATEST PODCAST EPISODE: Learning to Trust Yourself with Author Tama Kieves  My friend Tama Kieves wrote the book on trust I wish I’d had years ago. She’s a Harvard Law honors graduate who walked away from her law career with no plan and no money, following a single voice toward the life that was actually hers. We sat down to talk about her new book, Learning to Trust Yourself, and the thing nearly every A Course in Miracles student wrestles with: how do we tell the voice of love from the voice of fear?