Watch a video of an excerpt from the audiobook Loving in the Moment: Moving from Ego to Essence in Relationships by Gina Lake, narrated by Rebecca Van Volkinburg. Loving in the Moment offers a spiritual approach to relationships that provides tools for moving beyond ego and conditioning and tapping into the essential Oneness of all that is. This excerpt is from Chapter 3, Moving Beyond Anger. Photographs and video are by Mary Scott. To watch an 18 minute video, go here. It's the second video.

The audiobook, paperback, and Kindle e-book are available on Amazon.com at:

http://www.amazon.com/Loving-Moment-Moving-Essence-Relationships/dp/B00894Z7WK/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342453051&sr=1-5

One of the questions that commonly keeps us absorbed in our thoughts is the question of what to do: “Should I stay in my relationship or not? Should I quit my job or not? Should I get a master’s degree or not? Should I relocate or not?” Many feel moved to make some kind of change, but they don’t know if they can trust that urge or they don’t know what to do about it, and they’re left feeling confused and stuck.

Such questions, themselves, don’t necessarily cause stress, but the confusion and mental spinning of wheels that tends to accompany them can be stressful and draining. This confusion and difficulty trusting ourselves is caused by the egoic mind and isn’t necessary to the choice-making process. If you are feeling confused about a decision, that is a sign that the ego is involved in the choice-making process.

Many of us have a strong inner critic, and we take its criticism to heart, no doubt because its source is our childhood and the criticism we received then. When we were a child, we took our parents’ words and perceptions as the truth, so when they criticized us, we believe them: “You’re so careless! Why don’t you listen? Your head is in the clouds. You’d better start paying attention or you’ll never make it in life.”

Surely when our parents said such things, they thought they were being helpful. But although their intentions may have been good, the result wasn’t. Now we carry their words and the way those words made us feel around with us, and whenever we make a mistake, the same shame and feelings of inadequacy come up as when we were young.

Mistakes are normal, kids are imperfect, adults are imperfect, but as children, we’re likely to have concluded that making mistakes means we’re bad, we won’t do well in life, and any number of other conclusions. It’s no wonder many of us are paralyzed by new situations and challenges: “What if I make a mistake? I’ll probably screw up as usual.” We may stop ourselves from going after what we want, trying and learning new things, developing our talents, growing, and having fun, all because we’re afraid of feelings those familiar feelings of failure from long ago. Parental criticism becomes self-criticism. We learned to do that perfectly!

Shoulds (i.e., statements with “should” in them) are tricky because many of the shoulds in our egoic mind contain very good advice, while others are not so useful or even true. It’s helpful to know that you should brush your teeth twice a day and floss, that you should be kind to others, and that you should look both ways before crossing the street. These are useful guidelines. We were taught certain things, and these become rules to live by—shoulds. The problem is that not everything we were taught is true or always true or a good rule for us personally to live by in the moment in which the should arises.

We were taught things like: “You should obey your parents.” “You shouldn’t get angry.” “You should go to church.” “You shouldn’t talk to strangers.” “You should go to college.” “You shouldn’t cry.” “You should always tell the truth.” While these might have been useful instructions when we were growing up, are they useful to you now, in this moment? Shoulds are only a problem if we blindly and rigidly follow them without examining them for how true they are for us in the moment. Now that we have the capacity to do this as adults, we still often act as children in the face of a should, assuming it is always true and the sky will fall down if we don’t adhere to it.