Healing Our Imprinting

Of the three levels of imprinting, Level 1 is the most common, Level 2 is more entrenched and Level 3 is the most fully expressed, yet dissociated. In this discussion, we offer a variety of solitary, interpersonal and group processes to engage the imprinted parts of our self. We invite you to examine your own imprinting levels and transform them from a substitute identity into a meaningful part of your self-realization. We come to be self-realized through the process of Centralization (bringing together all the separate aspects of ourselves into a unified whole) and De-Centralization (where we release attachments to any particular way of being).  Healing our Imprinting is the first step in reconciling who we are versus who others want us to be. Until we become conscious of how our Truth gets subverted to serve others, we cannot be effective in expressing ourselves authentically. This requires reconstructing how our life expression was denied in how we accept superficial roles and imitation as substitutes for our natural contribution.

It is not just our imprinting that is the problem. We also become entangled by reactionary anti-imprinting beliefs that appear to counteract the imprinted beliefs of others. In other words, when we discover how limited we are being impacted by our imprinting, we usually attempt to distance ourselves from it by adopting opposite beliefs. The problem is, this increases internal fragmentation and sabotages any centralization efforts. One indicator of anti-imprinting is excessive daydreaming or dissociation by living in a fantasy world. Another is being unable to take effective action to get something done. While we have previously discussed that imprinting is the imitation of others to get approval and acceptance, we now see this can occur in both negative and positive ways. We have previously focused on the three levels, where we adopted the expressions and beliefs of others to get approval and acceptance. These are called positive imprinting beliefs. Positive imprinting is a desire to gain acceptance. Negative imprinting takes the opposite view, where we seek to feel rejected in order to affirm we have a choice about how to present ourselves.

This means that having anti-imprinting is a step toward the consciousness-building process where we start to engage healing. We can view it by expanding our context by shifting to an opposite perspective than that our parents provided. Examples of this abound every time we see somebody proving how bad they can be or how they can do what they want despite our best intentions. We need to eventually come to a middle ground where we have choices about how we want to show up. Others may not know how to positively connect to us, yet are also discovering how not to compromise themselves. These negative anti-imprinting beliefs also form and justify choices around the reactions we have to the imprinting of others. By doing either positive or negative imprinting, it prevents us from being seen. We still have the illusion that we are contributing through our reactions. The negative imprint contribution teaches us that we can survive disagreement. The positive imprint contribution teaches us we can meet others in ways that make them feel more comfortable. Of course, being our Creative Self is ultimately the best way to neutralize any reaction.

Now we are going to look at the unconscious ways we learned to deny others. It is harder to accept the negative side of imprinting because it reflects the collective unconsciousness of our society, as well as between our parents and us. We adopt counter-beliefs in the hope that this will maintain a separation between our reality and that of others. We believe that differences of opinion will create boundaries between our perceptions, which will help us individuate ourselves. Unfortunately, the more we adopt views that do not reflect our inner Truth, the more likely we become confused and create more pain around not being seen by others. In effect, each counterbalancing belief needs to be examined and released to get to our authentic Truth in order to centralize our understanding of ourselves. The goal, therefore, is to recognize that there is no absolute truth, but an ongoing process where our Truth can be revealed through Self-observation and Self-discovery.

To facilitate this process, we will present many different perspectives and ask the reader to examine their resonance with each. Some beliefs will feel comfortable, others will be discomforting. This is an indication that the process is working. Until we peel the onion of our Imprinting, it is important to not fall into the trap of believing we now understand it, when in fact, we have only revealed a few of the layers of our beliefs. Healing Imprinting is about letting go of any attachments to our Beliefs. What we discover is that our imprinting taught us to willfully ignore differences of opinions. The more we were trained to seek safety, the more we have a prescribed range in which differences of opinions can be dealt with. The more we heal our imprinting, the greater tolerance we develop about these differences. Otherwise, differences in opinions create anger, where we falsely believe others are trying to believe others are trying to impose themselves on us. This is a reaction to the compromise we experienced when we originally took on the beliefs of our parents. Any reaction to positive or negative imprinting is, in fact, a residual denial of ourselves.

Individuals who successfully neutralize their imprinting speak of a shift in awareness where they can honor their truth without needing to be comforted or reassured by others. The more we can step into the discomfort of opposing beliefs and truths and know we will not be damaged by the differences, the easier it will be to neutralize our Imprinting. We no longer define our reality in terms of a need to have others agree with or protect us. This permits us to move out of the zone of familiar interactions into an unknown field where our reality is still being discovered. Individuals who are committed to maintaining their past perceptions of self at the cost of growth are advised, therefore, to not proceed with this process if they do not have a heartfelt desire to honor their truth. For many of us it is easier to live in a world of beliefs as provided by others than to confront the terrifying reality that we have not only an obligation to validate our own experience, but the need to express ourselves in ways congruent with our Truth. The bottom line is when we know and accept our Truth, it is no longer something we need to prove or push on others.

Those who successfully neutralize their imprinting report that it takes time to recreate and understand the motivations of their parents. It is easy to get caught up in blaming our parents for what is not working in our own reality than to confront the possibility that their imprint on us will eventually be a useful and tool of comparison in knowing and recovering our creative identity. We recommend that individuals in this healing process acknowledge that their parents did the best they could, given the circumstances. The more we get caught up reacting to our parents’ intrusion into our reality, the more counterproductive the self-discovery process will be. In other words, instead of being a victim of circumstances, we can find a way to actively recognize that we took on this imprinting in a misguided attempt to demonstrate our love. One example is the statement “We choose our parents based on what we need in order to fully implement our Life Expression.”

While this is one way to describe this process, a more powerful way is to convey the opportunity that we choose our parents for the imprinting they provide so we can be stimulated to discover our Authentic Truth. This approach shifts the power from our parents back to us. It makes us the center of our own process. Of course, this means we need to be able to heal and neutralize the unconscious or ‘bad’ side of our parents’ Creative Expression to take charge of our lives. When we look at this process as an opportunity to clarify our differences with them, we can see that we can now contribute back to them! When we seek to acknowledge their positive motivations, it increases our own creativity and resourcefulness. We can then see how our parents’ Creative Expression was self-limiting, particularly as it applies to our own process. It then becomes possible to recognize and acknowledge how our parents unconsciously sabotaged their own Creative Expression by being at the effect of their parent’s imprinting. Without this insight, we are trapped in a world where we cannot go beyond our heredity.

Self-healing begins with recognizing how our parents could not do any better than they did. We took on their patterns even when we realized those patterns were sabotaging their life expression. Confusion was passed down to us because they/we did not know any better. It is time now to break the cycle of placating others into believing that imprinting somehow protects us and them from uncomfortable truths. With imprinting we create comfortable stories that distort what really occurred. This type of Objectification kept us from directly taking action to fulfill our life path. Before we go deeper into this process, it is important to let go of any judgments about how our parents were or were not successful in life. Just as Outer Success does not equate with Inner Success, we can see how we may have taken on our parent’s conflicts and made them our own. This is often reflected in the kind of work we do to insure security. It may also be reflected in our choice of partners. In both situations, because we expect certain conflicts in our lives, we tend to put ourselves in positions where these conflicts are repeated. This makes us comfortable with the familiar, but creatively denied and discounted by the absence of our Authentic Nature.

The more we think we need a career that establishes us uniquely, the more likely we are being driven by safety and security needs. The image of who we should be drives us, rather than just being who we are. We get trapped in defining ourselves in terms of others. We operate in unconscious patterns on Instinctive, Intellectual and Idealized levels that interfere with our ability to act and think naturally. We are also unaware how previous traumatic experiences interfere with our ability to interact with others. These negative experiences create prejudice and bias within us that is not seen or acknowledged. While most of this is Objectification, which is part of a Defensive pattern, our Imprinting becomes the outer representation of what we think we should be. As we go through the seven Creative Expression in this discussion, we will experience the different ways each engages different energies in sub-optimal ways.

For example, some of us have had negative experiences with Compassionates who we do not consciously understand. When we engage a Compassionate who is doing Compassionate imprinting, there are two impressions we typically note: 1) this person is extremely controlling and demanding about how things should be managed (fearing things will fall apart), and 2) they are driven because of a lack of Self acceptance, which is manifested by the inability to receive support.

From the Compassionate’s point of view, we typically feel less powerful than others because we cannot manifest our outward capabilities at a level that matches this control and/or focus. We then unconsciously distance ourselves from others by making ourselves right and them wrong. This projection process is called ‘displacing our fears on others to make us feel better.’ The negative imprinting we project is not even conscious.

Imprinting is often experienced as adapting to others when, in reality, it is a discounting of our Selves. We will now discuss the three levels of negative imprinting each expression type employs. It is important to remember that these are inner beliefs that we are projecting on others to keep ourselves from feeling less than them.

Anti-imprinting beliefs reflect the degree to which we have accepted the imprint of our parents. In a way, these beliefs were how we inoculated ourselves against feeling controlled by the fact that we had to be accepted this way. Until we accept and neutralize these inner beliefs, we are unconsciously projecting past issues on people in ways that discount and deny our current creative connection with them. This is due to the fact that we are identifying with the beliefs as who we are, rather than seeing the beliefs as a way to organize ourselves. We need to release our attachments to the belief as a part of our identity in order to take ownership as an expression of our Being. Until we own these beliefs, we unconsciously place others into categories without knowing their real intentions. This is because we project on them the way other people project on us. Anti-imprinting beliefs are rationales for maintaining our vigilance in the face of a traumatic past. The key is to acknowledge which beliefs are operating so we can release any attachments to them when they arise. These beliefs are buried in the way we treat others who are different from us. When people are creatively tuned in to themselves, they can read these beliefs very easily in us and others.

Just because we know what the issues are does not solve the problem. We need to eliminate or replace our beliefs with less exclusive ones on both creative and energetic levels to prevent attracting counter-imprinted people. In other words, until we release our own imprinting, we will naturally attract those with counter-beliefs and opposite imprinting. This creates unnecessary friction and distance because we get caught up trying to comfort others when we do not even know how to comfort ourselves. Until we recognize we do not have to protect ourselves from differences, we will continue being entangled in imprinting discussions that never go away. Others are often confused when we confront their imprinted beliefs because they are not conscious of how they have over-identified with them. This means they cannot move or flow, because anyone questioning their beliefs recreates the original incident where they made the decision and created the protective belief.

The most frustrating thing about this is that the discussions never get resolved unless we take proactive steps towards forgiving others and ourselves. It is also helpful to bring humor to the situation, and perhaps even act out our imprints when they are recognized. By letting go of attachments, we establish a reality that others can be different from how we perceive them and still be fun. The goal is to open our self up to just being with what is now, rather recreating our imprinted past. It is also important to see how impotent these beliefs are in how they affect us externally or internally, once we see them for what they are. We need to stop taking them as serious mandates or believe that they are red flags that keep us from dealing with people. Otherwise, we are giving them the power to dominate our life choices.

The more we see that our beliefs are only default assumptions from which we operate (when we are not engaging others consciously on a creative level), the more others will be able to engage us with less of their ‘stuff’ coming up. This is because imprinting, judgments and negative beliefs can actually trigger and interact with our perceptions, causing greater confusion and creative denial on all levels. We tend to make our imprinted beliefs more powerful when we feel people are in opposition to us. It is important to note, that whenever people challenge our imprints, it makes us fearful and feel small. It is like we have gone back to our childhood and we are being lectured about something.

The more we re-create the experience of people working with us, and can see ourselves clearly for who we are, the less reactive or polarized we will be with others. In other words, beliefs only become powerful when we identify with them in order to protect us from other people’s beliefs. What if we did not need the protection of Beliefs? From our perspective, Beliefs are, at best, temporary perceptions that need to be constantly regenerated to continue to have value. As a child, every time we took on an imprint, we decided how we needed to be to gain acceptance and we formulated a Belief to guide us in operating this way consistently. Unfortunately, now we are at the effect of these past guidelines and now need to upgrade them so they are more consciously consistent with our true, Creative Nature. Any disagreements between our imprinting and Creative Nature means we either have not processed through our imprinting, or that we have not accepted our Creative Nature.

One of the most effective processes for healing beliefs is to put ourselves in situations where we are extremely uncomfortable being with people who represent our polarities. We then tell the truth about how we feel, harmlessly, without projecting on them. The more we deal with this issue in ourselves by talking about our concerns with others, the more we release our energetic imprints. The result is a more natural relationship with less ‘unconscious stuff’ defining it. Becoming conscious about our patterns does not mean we will not go unconscious and act them out again at some point. When we are tired or stressed or afraid, we may fall back into the imprints from our parents. But as we become more conscious of our patterns and notice them occurring again and again, we can neutralize their effects by recognizing their origins and knowing they do not reflect a true intention of how we wish to connect with someone in the moment.

Another way of healing our imprinting is to identify higher Motives that we want to implement or engage in our life and take action to do so. What immediately arises is all of our safety and security imprinting, which wants us to compromise ourselves to operate on a smaller level. Higher level Motives trigger all of our imprinting, so that we can start to address each imprint one at a time and remake the beliefs and decisions behind them. The highest levels of Motives are Universal Dominion, Mutual Accomplishment and Conscious Participation. When we are operating on this Intuitive Level, there is little or no room for unconscious imprinting. The more we clarify what our Intent is, and then align ourselves to taking action to make it so, the less imprinting we will confront. Clearing our imprinting requires perseverance and dedication because it will release in layers. The more we get down to the core Motives that we have previously compromised, the more we will see how much Life energy we have blocked. Let us renew our Life energy flow by healing our imprints!