"In The Absence of That Which You Are Not, That Which You Are Is Not".
As a keen student of personal development, I devour every bit of wisdom I can get from all sources. Recently I heard something from one of my favourite authors, Neal Donald Walsch. What he said was this…
“In the absence of that which you are not, that which you are is not”.
Now at first, this can be a little hard to understand. It took me a little while, but once I got my head around this, it was really profound. So just in case you’re having as much trouble with this as I was initially, let me just explain to you how this works.
Let’s say for example that you were a really tall person who is 7 feet tall. Being 7 feet tall is a truth about you that doesn’t change. For example, you will always be exactly the same height, 7 feet tall. However when people refer to you as being a “Tall” person, that is a relative term. You can only ever be “Tall” in comparison with other people. By our societal standards, anyone who is 7 foot tall is “Tall”. But if EVERYONE was 7 foot tall, you would no longer be “Tall”, you would be “Normal”. If you lived in a world where the average person was 9 foot tall, then you would actually be considered “Short” by comparison.
All the time, your height hasn’t changed, but the label that is applied to you changes relative to how you compare to other people. So compared to other people, you are tall, not short.
Therefore, “That which you ARE” is tall, and “That which you are NOT” is short. You’re only tall, compared to people who are short. If there were no short people there would be no one to compare yourself to, then you would not be tall in comparison to anyone. So, “In the absence of that which you are NOT” (short), then that which you ARE (tall) is not!
I hope this is beginning to make sense by now!
So, if you can get your mind around this, then the next question to ask is how can you apply this in a practical way to your everyday life.
Well what we’re really talking about here is that YOU have to be the SOURCE of what you want to be part of your reality and not put your sense of identity in having a certain “Label” applied to you. The reason for this is that not only can labels change as we’ve seen, but also when we invest ourselves in having a certain label to describe us, then we tend to attract by default the opposite to this.
Let me give you an example, have you ever experienced a situation of setting a Goal to “have money” and as soon as you set the Goal, you start losing money, bills turn up and it seems like you’ve actually attracted the exact opposite of what you wanted.
Well, there’s a couple of reasons for this. One reason is that we attract what we are FEELING about, not what we are THINKING about. So if you set a Goal to have money for example you start to think about all the things that you could do if you had money. Like, if I had money I could pay all those stupid bills, I could get rid of this lousy car, I could quit my dead end job and so forth. The Universe then analyses how you FEEL about those stupid bills, and because you get what you are FEELING about, The Universe brings you more situations that allow you to FEEL the same way as you do when you get those stupid bills. Think about your lousy car and, you guessed it, The Universe brings you more experiences to make you FEEL that way.
But what I really wanted to get at here is that the other reason for this is because when we put our sense of identity in a label, The Universe will bring the opposite of that into our reality. Let me explain why this is the case. We all have a subconscious need to be true to our sense of identity and that includes the labels that we use for ourselves. When we give ourselves a label, The Universe seeks to prove to us that the label we give ourselves is true by providing an example of the opposite.
Let me give you an example of this. Let’s start out by using a simple example. Let’s say that you see yourself as being a “Good” person. If you label yourself as a “Good” person, then The Universe will instantly go to work trying to prove to you that what you say is true and you are indeed a good person. The easiest way to do this is by bringing examples of the opposite of that into your reality. So you see yourself as being a good person and the next thing you know you seem to have all kinds of bad, dishonest and untrustworthy people coming into your reality. It’s The Universe’s way of saying, see compared to THIS person, you really are a good person!
The more important it is for you to be good, the more important it is for The Universe to prove that you’re right by showing you a greater contrast. If it’s moderately important for you to be a good person then The Universe will respond by bringing into your reality a moderate level of contrast, a moderately bad or dishonest person. The more important it is for you to have this label, the greater the level of contrast The Universe will show you.
That’s just an example, but the same applies to anything. Use relationships as an example. If you place high importance in being loyal and having integrity in a relationship, The Universe will prove to you that you are a loyal person of integrity by bringing into your reality the contrast of that. You will keep encountering people who prove that, compared to them, you are a loyal person of integrity.
So if that is the case, then how can you ever get around this problem? If you’re a good person, does this mean that you’re forever DOOMED to meeting only people who are the opposite of that? Even worse, does that mean that if you want to have good people in your life, then you must become a BAD person yourself so that you can attract the contrast of that?
Well, the good news is the solution is actually quite simple and doesn’t involve you having to be a bad person! You simply have to stop putting your sense of identity in labels and instead go within. YOU have to be the source of what you want to be. So if you want to be a good person for example, then you have to BE the source of what you believe it means to be a good person. You simply stop labelling yourself as being a good person. Break it down, instead of using the label “Good” what do you believe it means to be a good person? Would a good person be honest and have integrity? Well, if you break it down to that level and see yourself as being honest and having integrity, then you will attract the contrast of that, people who are dishonest and have no integrity! No matter how far down you break it, if you’re using words as labels to describe yourself, you will attract the contrast.
So in other words, you stop using “words” to describe yourself, and your sense of identity instead comes from a more intangible FEELING from within. Have you ever felt a really intense emotion that you couldn’t put into words? We have a traumatic experience, like a death in the family, and we say that we are so upset that we can’t put how we feel into words. Something profoundly wonderful, like the birth of your first child, happens and you say you’re so happy you can’t put how you feel into words. That’s what we’re talking about here. What used to be your label must now become an internal truth within you. Something you don’t need to put into words because it has now become a part of you.
As I like to say it,
“When that which you are is not, that which you are not has no power over you”.
In simple terms, when you stop seeing yourself as being “Good”, or any other label, you also stop attracting the contrast. And it doesn’t involve you NOT being what you were before. To use the previous example, if you stop seeing yourself as being “Tall” you’ll still be the exact same height as you were before, you just stop using the label. Stop seeing yourself as being “Good” and at your core, you’ll still be the same person you were before. Your character remains unchanged, just as your height would.
Try this out! Internalise the things that are important to you, stop using labels for them and instead BE THE SOURCE!
Leave a comment below to let me know how you’re going with this...