Charles Dickens' American classic, The Christmas Carol, is a story centered around a sad man named Ebenezer Scrooge. We come into the story at the epoch of his miserable life. The story depicts a lonely man where the only comfort he has is his money and apparently that isn't working for him very well. How did this man get to this point? He isn't different from any of us with his humble dysfunctional beginnings. Mr. Dickens describes Scrooge's life as meak and lonely with a cold, unloving father. In order for Scrooge to be able to change his present he had to revisit the times where he held a lot of his pain. Those moments become life changing events because we make decisions on how that event defines us from that day forward. We carry those decisions with us and they shape the reality we live in. Scrooge created a miserable life with those decisions and would have continued to do so until he had a visit from the Ghost of Christmas past. The ghost of Christmas past simply shows you the times in your life where you made the decisions that created your Christmas present. My mother had such a visit yesterday.
There has been a strange energy around my mother for as long as I can remember. Going to the grocery store was an awesome experience until we got to the till. We would be having a fun chat and then my mother would change before my very eyes. She would park her cart beside the grocery belt and hobble over to the till. She would then watch the woman like a hawk all the while waiting to pounce on her for any bobble or perceived mistake. Next would come the litany of how she has to continue doing this for every time she goes to the store the bill is wrong. Her belief is that somehow, someway she gets ripped off every time she goes shopping. It must drive her crazy when she goes shopping alone for when I'm with her I load and unload the groceries and it gives her more scrutiny time lol. While I'm loading the cart she takes out the bill and searches through it like there is some type of secret code that she has to break. All the while exclaiming on how she didn't buy that item and get all worked up until she discovers that she did. You can see the anguish that she goes through and how she truly believes that people are out to take her money. The last time we went shopping my mother was infuriated at the cashier who made an error. Because of that error, she had to take our large grocery order to customer service to have each individual item returned and rebought. She was clearly frustrated and added another event to her every growing list of evidence regarding this belief.
While having a conversation yesterday, my mother and I were talking about finances and she her textbook answers came out:
- I can't afford that
- That's too much money
- I don't have enough money and on and on.
Instead of listening to her in silence I decided to ask her why she keeps saying that when it's not true. We could be talking about a $75 dollar item and you would think it cost a thousand dollars with the way she accentuates how much it is. When she finished I reminded her that when she goes to the craft store she can drop twice that much and has. I then asked her if it was really true that she was broke. She was silent for a minute and said no. My mother has been careful and has created a life where she can stop the insanity. She will never be the type to be extravagant on any level for she loves her deals way too much but she can loosen up a tiny bit. I asked her why she was used that verbiage and she didn't really know. It then dawned on me that it was the ghost of her past that was speaking.
If my mother would have married a different man she would have been a millionaire. She is gifted in creativity, ingenuity and seeing business opportunities. She could make money doing almost anything and is very good with people. My dad on other hand was the complete opposite for as my mother was the flow of money he was the drain. It was my mother's job to ensure that us kids were clothed and fed for dad would take money for bills and go play bingo. She would have a constant flow of cash that my dad would just help himself to. It got to the point that my mom would resort to hiding money so that my dad couldn't find it but he always did.
Fast forward almost 30 years and here my mother is still acting if she was living with my dad. She mentioned that she opened her wallet to find some money in it. She had put it in a different compartment in the wallet for safe keeping. The old habit of hiding money in the wallet to keep it from my dad was an unconscious act now and she didn't realize she was still doing it. Her belief that her money was always taken from her completely clouded her perspective and blinded her to remembering that she put it somewhere else. She was so conditioned that when she opened the cash compartment of her wallet and saw it empty she would she believed it was spent instead of hidden. Imagine the vibration that that belief sent to the Universe. It's no wonder she was hypersensitive to people stealing from her because she had allowed it for so many years. Instead of changing her reality with my dad, she instead believed that she was powerless and people will try to take advantage of her. So after the divorce she worked on her response to the belief and made sure it never happened again. The problem there was that the vibration around the belief of being taken advantage of was what she was transmitting. It's no surprise that it continued to happen to her.
One other aspect of her dialogue regarding her finances was to thwart this belief as well but accomplished the exact opposite for the pattern continued. Her reasoning was that if she continued to proclaim that she was poor she could attempt to deflect any oncomer's potential interest in her money. Don't get me wrong there had been many dark times during the marriage financially that warranted that talk. That was a double edged sword for her disclaimer was both accurate and also used as a ploy for my dad to stop trying to steal the money. Maybe by talking that way he would do something other than expect her to make it. I also wonder if it was a passive aggressive way to try to guilt my dad to change his ways. Hmmm... never thought of that until now. Anyways, my mom was using a program of the past that was not accurate for the present time. When I spoke of this to her she immediately justified herself that she had 23 years of this pattern and old habits were hard to break. That is quite a large number of years but what about the fact that she has been divorced and independant of him for longer than that? When I asked her that she laughed but then got silent. How long do you use that as your reasoning? She may have used it for 10 more years if it hadnt been brought to her attention. It will be fascinating to see what transpires after this discovery.
Do you have similar programs?
Today I welcome a visit from the ghost of my past so that I can change my present.