If the measure of any experience is the

emotion that I feel while living it, than the key

of having a fulfilled life, is having access to
fulfilling emotions.
Nicoleta Sandu
https://web.facebook.com/NicoletaSanduCoach/

THE LIGHT
WITHIN

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 Good versus Bad

In many ways the duality Good vs Bad leads our thinking towards:
This is Good means that the opposite IS Bad.
Wherever opposition appears, a conflict starts.
I invite you to learn and practice leaving behind as many GOOD vs
BAD as possible, therefore to free yourself from opposition and
conflict, to open yourself, as much as you feel like, to your own
Freedom of Choice.

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 The story of the Little Lightbulb

Once upon a time there was a little lightbulb. He was somehow blurry on his left side,
because he was born with sadness inside himself. Even before he came to life, the idea of
separating itself from the Source and to contain the Light of the Source inside a small and
fragile body of a lightbulb, made him sad.
Because he was already blurry on his left side, his mother didn’t know how to set him in his
best light, so he was often left behind, while other lightbulbs learned how to shine together.
His parents taught him how to cover his blurry left side by gluing some paper over
it. “You see, they use to say, not letting others to see inside you will protect you from
harm”, they taught him. But on the inside, the patch of paper & glue had written on it: “I am
different, and this is bad. People might harm me if they see me as who I am”.
In time, he grew into that loneliness of his, he started to enjoy more being alone then shining
his golden light with others. One day he noticed that his right side got blurry too.
His parents rushed to help him cover his blurry right side under paper & glue. He felt like he
was flawed. On the inside, his new patch looked like a label and had written on it: “Nobody
likes me = this is bad” and “At least I am alone most of the time and people can’t hurt me =
this is good”.
He went to university and there he met another lonely blurry lightbulb. They felt
attracted to each other, but aside their loneliness and their sadness, they didn’t share much.
On the inside, a new sentence got written on one of his patches that looked like a label: “This
is the only person who really likes me, and I like being liked, I feel Good”.

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 Because they didn’t get much in common except of their loneliness, because they had
no real love and joy between them, they yelled at each other most of the time and everything
inside them and around them seemed to get foggier and foggier.
They kept on covering their blurry patches, to protect their fragile glass from breaking,
and to prevent anybody to see inside them.
The written sentences on the inside of the Little Lightbulb were confusing: near the
initial sentence of “This is the only person who really likes me”, a new sentence with bold
letters was growing- “I won’t love another lightbulb ever again because all lightbulbs hurt
me, loving others is Bad. I am alone and safe, this is Good”.
By the time they got separated, the Little Lightbulb had so many patches that he
hadn’t any light left inside him to shine.
All that he was able to do was to sit alone in his own dark, confused by his own inner labels,
unable to decide how to use his own light.
His parents tried to help him, his friends tried to match him with other patched lightbulbs
like him- but all his inner labels were turning him towards “Life is unfair and hard, I am
unlucky” and this just sucked the life out of him. Days went by in his blurry patched
darkness, without him seeing the sky, or being able to enjoy flowers and rain and rainbows.
One night he dreamt how he was label-free, running on a green meadow, full of joy
and light.
He woke up and the feelings from the dream seemed to linger in him. For the first time in
years, he felt hope.

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 Hope made his inner light bit brighter and everything for him got hot. He thought to
himself: I want to try living. Living is Good! And this thought grew inside him like a
burning desire. And because burning was not just a metaphor for him, his glue and his paper
patches were getting scorched by the heat of his inner light raising his burning desire to live.
You know how nasty plastic smells when heated... And his scorched patches smelled
like burned plastic and they looked like dirty rags clinging to him. He saw misunderstanding
in the eyes of the Lightbulbs around him and he perceived their misunderstanding as a new
label: “It means I am doing it wrong. I can’t do anything right because I am flawed. This is
Bad. “He got afraid and he covered himself with new patches. “My parents and my friends
are right. It’s better being protected in the dark than running amok scorched and burn-
smelling, revealing my blurry wounds for everybody to see inside me”. He started covering
himself once again. His labels grew thicker, because he felt more vulnerable than ever, and
labels allowed him to separate himself from the world, to feel safe.
Fortunately, his inner light was more powerful than any label he was willing to cover
with. His inner light was shining steadily through him, healing him, supporting him, teaching
him how to be himself in the world. He understood that by accepting other’s labels for him
and for his life, by trying to transform himself into something that he was not, leads him to
that life of living through some patches that aren’t his to wear.
He kept on fueling his desire to live and to enjoy living, and the patches were getting
burned by this burning desire, by his inner light, until there were no patches left.
And he still had some blurry shadows. He wasn’t perfect. He just knew now that precisely
through those shadows, his inner light was reflecting in a unique way to the world.

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And because he liked living more day by day, more and more lightbulbs wanted to be with
him. They just loved his inner beauty. Without those patches, he had no more labels to re-
inforce the idea that he was flawed. He felt free to live and he enjoyed living. He loved
himself knowing that the beauty of his light was possible because all of the blurry shadow-
like parts inside him. He felt complete, even while he knew he wasn’t perfect.
One day he was out in the park, glowing lightly, listening to the symphonic sounds of the
birds when another Little Lightbulb sat next to him on the bench.
She had a magic inner glamour and our Little Lightbulb felt mesmerized…and mute 😊.

- The minute I saw you, showing your blurry sides so openly and honestly, I knew I had to
meet you, she told him.
- I, myself, have scars, and I have my own blurry side, she pushed aside her beautiful long
hair to proudly show him a scar on her left and a blur on her right upper cheek. My family
and friends tried to teach me my whole life how to patch me and label myself in the ways
they were doing. I couldn’t do it. Being myself feels so freeing. Not having to hide behind
masks, she continued.
I’m sure you know how this story ends. They lived happily ever after. Not because they
never had a quarrel or troubles, but because they kept being open and honest. They kept
glowing their inner light to themselves and to each other. They kept shining the way, their
way.

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 We are the little lightbulb so many times, in so many ways.
We move through life and by our heritage, education and experience, we get stuck with our
own labels.
We have labels, for ourselves and for others.
Many of us know them as judgements.
I name them labels because they function in the way I described in the story of the
Little Lightbulb. Naming them it’s not important. Understanding ourselves through these
labels, is.
Through the thick wall of lifetime long labels, our inner light may get shunned. It
doesn’t have to be a thick wall.
We can embrace both our qualities and our flaws, we can change perspectives in an instant,
at any time, and we can view our life as being full of paths, choices and opportunities.
It is up to us to live playfully and to enjoy the ride.

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 HOW?

Each of us is unique therefore we perceive our world in our own unique way.

We are unique due to our genetical heritage – we are born equipped with inherited strengths
and weaknesses and we perceive our world accordingly.

We are unique through Education. We believe what we are told when we trust the person
as an authority, and we perceive the world through the lenses of those people with authority
in our life. We educate in ways of others.

We are unique through Experience.

While living, experiencing, we create our own image about people, world, situations.

We interact all the time with people, objects, places, situations.

We collect information about the world through our senses. We name each person, object,
situation we encounter, and we store in our memory all the Data we have on it - In the same
way we would store a box with stuff in our attic, we handle everything in our world by
adding a label and its name on it.
We analyze and label all the information of each box that we have, based on our genetical
heritage, education and experience. Our ANALYSYS acts as a label on the box, connected
with the Name we have for the stuff in the box.
Again, based on our genetical heritage, education and experience, we establish what’s Good
and what’s Bad about each box – actually about the content of each box - and we attach
Emotion to it.
Emotion is information that we can feel. We code information about the stuff we stored in
the box into feelings and we attach feelings to each and any box that we have.

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 We view the world and we interpret it.
We associate what we see, the interpretation of it, our opinions of Good or Bad and our
Emotions about it.

Why?

+ One of the main reasons for labeling is gaining time. Reaction time is shortened
drastically this way.
We encounter huge amount of Information each day.
We can react faster when we have it all sorted out, classified and labeled.

- It has its shortcomings too…

It makes it harder for us to update labels and it is difficult to retrace the steps we took when
we created them.
This means that we can see the label Good/Bad, we can feel the emotions attached to it, but
we don’t know exactly why we created that precise label.

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 What?

What do we do with these labels? …

How we perceive our world reflects inwardly and becomes a way to perceive us.
We use labels to organize our world.
We view our labels as a definition of who we are.

We live in a Dual Universe.

We have the duality Good vs Bad at the core of our functioning system.
We learn what is Good for us by comparison with what is Bad for us.
We know ourselves through these comparisons and through dualities.
Our identity is our core.
We live our identities.

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 Therefore, whenever we:

Label something in our Exterior as being Good

,and

We perceive that we are different than that Exterior element,

We tend to view ourselves through a label I am Bad.

Same is true the other way around:

Label something in our Exterior as being Bad

,and
We perceive that we are different that that Exterior element
=
We tend to view ourselves as being Good.

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 The Link between our Identity and our Reality

When I am in the Duality Good versus Bad my Identity is what I have built through my own
perceptions and interpretations of what good and bad is.
Often times, we perceive that whatever isn’t good, is bad.
The concept in itself is false.
Even if something in my exterior world is Good and I am different, it doesn’t mean that I am
Bad: It means just that: I am different.
We live in a Universe of diversity. Each of us is unique. There are no absolutes.
We can use labels to organize our world. They are useful.
This doesn’t mean that we should believe in them to define us.
We are not our world.
We are not our labels.

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 FULL CIRCLE

All the areas of life are intertwined.

When one or several areas are out of balance, it is difficult to have balance in life.
The story of the Little Lightbulb by this chart would be something like this,

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 When Little Lightbulb wanted to play with his friends, his mother kept telling him to
be careful. “You are fragile because you’re so blurry on your left side, you may be easily
hurt. It’s better and safer for you to stay home”.
He labeled his exterior world as being “not safe” and he labeled himself as being
“fragile and flawed”.
He believed this label of himself as part of his identity.
We believe in the truth of our identity and we protect it as our most precious asset.
As a “fragile and flawed” Lightbulb, he was overconcerned about his health & fitness, extra-
careful in regards to his physical environment and reluctant to go with the flow of his friends
in fun recreation and entertainment.
After his parents patched him all over when he got blurry on his right side too, he labeled
himself with “I can’t be liked and loved”.
All the labels we hold on to about ourselves, create the identity we consider as being our
true self.
His label I can’t be either liked either loved, went to his identity core and affected his Love
Life, his Career, all his relationships and all his fun. And he didn’t even realized how
believing his labels affected his life – HE BELIEVED “I AM” THIS.
Once he let go his labels, about his friends, his family, his world, his core labels about
himself changed too.
He saw himself as “I am imperfect, but I am worthy of being loved”.
This new I AM set in the centre of his life circle, made him capable of having loving
relationships with himself and with others.
This new I AM made him capable of enjoying life with fun, of having a career that he liked.
We decide and we act based on who we believe that we are.
From within our identity, we create our world over and over again.

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 Evrika ☺ this is gold!

Our internal systems will always lead us towards what we have labeled as Good.
Our internal systems will always lead us away from what we have labeled as Bad.
We create our reality according to what we believe is our identity.

Realizing the meaning of this, was my Evrika! moment.

It gave me the opportunity to appreciate all my past decisions!

It allowed me to understand how at each cross-road I did my best, based on
information-stored in my labels and based on who I thought that I am.

The great news of this is that we are always going towards what we have labeled as Good, so
even what seems to be our worst decision, was made because we were heading towards what
we perceive as being the best for us, at that time.

Whatever I believe that I Am, will become my reality, as a consequence of my decisions

and actions.

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 Neutrality rocks

When we reside in neutrality, we allow diversity to coexist.

Something that This is Good for me may be Bad for others or viceversa.
Good and Bad tend to create conflicts.
Neutrality is open.
From the perspective of neutrality, being Different is Diversity and it is accepted as a natural
state.
From the perspective of neutrality, we build our identity with the Freedom of Choice.
Lacking the fear of Bad, or the strive to keep our attachment to what we believe that it’s
Good, IN NEUTRALITY we respond to life by using our free will.
When we use our free will, we allow more of our own inner light to shine through.

I invite you on the journey of growing and shining our inner light
together, as a community.
Keep in touch, and
Visit my website:
Soul-coach.me
Like my page:
https://www.facebook.com/NicoletaSanduCoach/
Ladies, please join my FB group Soul Guided Relationships:
www.facebook.com/groups/SoulGuidedRelationships

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