 Understand
Yourself
Understanding
Your Core Issue
Part One:
Van Shares His Story
by
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D.
After
many years of doing coaching work with people, studying
human psychology and behavior, as well as doing much work
on my own self exploration, I long ago concluded
that everyone has a core issue inside of them�one issue
that rules the subconscious more so than any other.
Because people are so afraid of that one core issue
popping up, they tend to hide it deep within themselves. Most
hope it never surfaces and will do anything to keep from
experiencing it. So it goes unresolved and continues to run
thoughts, emotions and actions from deep within ourselves.
It�s
important for each of us to remember we are not our
emotions.
Instead, our emotions are energy flowing through
us.
And what you resist tends to persist, even if it is
buried deep inside.
I�ve
been busy this summer doing a new kind of self exploration
that has led me on an extraordinary journey in dealing
with my very core issue. This has been a powerful
experience for me, and I�d like to share some of it with you.
So
let�s jump right into a little of Van�s early
childhood history.
Childhood
History
Six
months after I was born, my father left for the
Philippines.
He was involved in reconstruction after the war,
but I was too young to understand that.
All I knew was that suddenly, I didn�t have a
father.
My mother told me that I was so upset that I
wouldn�t eat and it took a lot of work on their part to
get food into me.
As
I gradually got over my father leaving, my grandfather
became my father-figure.
When I was two years old, my father returned.
Then my family moved to Japan�without my
grandfather.
Thus, I was now losing my grandfather.
And for most of my childhood, I always thought of
my Grandfather�s house as my home.
In
Japan, I became particularly close to a Japanese
housekeeper that we called Mitzi.
She was like a mother to me and to this date
one of my treasures is a picture of Mitzi and I together.
But
at five years old, I left Japan and I never saw Mitzi
again. It
felt like my heart broke.
Gratefully, I went on to have my core family with
me for the rest of my childhood.
Nevertheless, I think the psychological damage from
the losses was done at that point.
I
don�t have any charge on any of these individual
happenings because I�ve done many, many years of
clearing work on my issues neutralizing them. However, my one core issue was still
there, even
after all the work I�d done.
Let
me share another thing that happened.
My mother died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 85.
She�d lived a good life and I was at peace with
her. I was actually happy that she had made her transition
and could now join the rest of our family (my father died
in 1977 and my sister died in 1988).
What I didn�t expect was a reaction that I had
going through my mother�s things.
What
I found among my mother�s things was a letter from
Mitzi�s husband, written in 1958, trying so desperately
to reach us.
When I read that letter, I became about as
emotional as I can ever remember being.
It was my mother�s funeral, but I was crying over
Mitzi.
Mitzi
had eventually married a U.S. soldier and moved to the
U.S.
My family was living in England, so we never saw
her.
But my understanding is that my sister said
something to upset her that caused a rift between our
families. Furthermore,
I�d been told that Mitzi had died a few years later of a
brain tumor before my family returned from England.
So
what does all this have to do with my core issue?
Well, my core issue has been a very deep sense of
loneliness and emptiness inside. I�ve
only felt it a few times, but when it came up it was so
bad that I never wanted to feel it again.
In fact, I tend to believe that my whole life has
been about doing whatever was necessary not to feel that
feeling.
I wouldn�t get too close to people because they
might leave me, and I�d distract myself with work or
escape activities. I�ve always felt like that emptiness
was around someplace that I had to hide from it.
And
Then Something Happened!
In
June, I was in Florida doing a preparation course for my
Oneness course in Fiji.
We were doing an exercise on strengthening your
inner guidance.
We were asked to imagine the qualities we wanted
our inner guidance to have so that our relationship would
become very, very strong and wonderful and we were given blessings
to help us produce that. I decided that I wanted an
internal guidance that was very, very joyful.
We
were doing an exercise in which we concentrated on the
qualities we wanted, asking the universe to give them to
us.
And while we were doing that we were getting
�hands on� oneness blessings. I
had three of them.
The first two felt very masculine, strong, and
comforting.
But that wasn�t what I was looking for.
However, the third blessing given transferred a
very gentle feminine energy into me.
And when I felt it, an immense joy came over me.
And suddenly, the word �Mitzi� came into my
heart.
That
evening, I felt this utter sense of completeness inside of
me.
And I knew that it was now part of me and that I
could never feel that dreaded sense of emptiness again.
I realized that feeling of emptiness was just an
illusion.
It was just a feeling that I identified with and
resisted.
Now, I have a new feeling of being whole and
complete inside of myself, like I will never have to look
outside myself again for that sense of fulfillment.
That feeling is within me and it is always
available.
At
that point I felt very, very happy. And my internal
guidance (which feels like it is Mitzi) says that this is
only the beginning of something much more magnificent to
come.
Next
week I�ll share an amazing twist in this story. My
memories of Mitzi triggered an amazing series of events,
and I look forward to sharing more with you.
About
Van Tharp: Trading coach, and author, Dr. Van K. Tharp is widely
recognized for his best-selling book Trade Your Way to Financial
Freedom and his outstanding Peak Performance Home Study program
- a highly regarded classic that is suitable for all levels of
traders and investors. You can learn more about Van Tharp at www.iitm.com.
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