Recently, I watched an episode of “House Hunters.” I knew it was going to be a good episode because the wife worked as an interior designer and the husband worked as a financial planner. There was no way in H-E-double-toothpicks that the realtor was going to find a house that met the needs of the interior designer and was within the financial planner’s budget.
I watch that show a lot, and I’ve noticed that most people want their house to replicate their childhood if they had a good childhood. If they had a bad childhood, then they want the house to fix their childhood. That’s a little bit too much to ask of a house. Nevertheless, that’s very often the theme of the show. Therefore, every house that most buyers preview is compared to something from the past, which means that they’re still living in the past.
This couple didn’t mention that common theme at all. That was refreshing. In every “House Hunters” show, the real estate agent shows the home buyer three homes; then they have to pick one of the three. It’s my understanding that they actually get to see a lot more than three homes, but we only get to see three on the show.
As expected, the couple could not come to any form of agreement. The cheap houses did not meet the desires of the interior decorator wife, and the expensive houses made the husband budget crazy. The realtor tried to find a compromise, but that didn’t work either. When the couple does not agree, we get to find out who wears the pants in the end. One person will happily cave to keep peace in the relationship. But before we discuss that, I want to get to the meat of this article.
I noticed something odd in the wife’s speaking. When she walked into a house that was pretty or unique, but not in style, it seemed that the interior designer aspect of her mind was at odds with her own personal sense of style; she’d say, “I don’t know what to think about this house.” I had to stop and think about what she said. It sounded ridiculous. She was saying that she should know how to think about the house, but she didn’t. She was using the word know, but she was clearly talking about a voice in her mind. I call such voices “clones of the false God.” They are voices that rule over our mind like authority figures ruling over our life; they are not our True Self. Our True Self doesn’t use words very often, and when it does use words, they are sparse and direct. The True Self doesn’t use the Socratic Method and give us things to ponder. In other words, it never behaves as a teacher. It’s part of our mind; and we should already know what is in it. So there is nothing to learn once we can access it.
It sounded like the woman was used to a voice in her mind that told her what to think all the time. Suddenly that voice became quiet. So she literally didn’t know what to think because her mind wasn’t thinking for a change. This is one reason why people have noisy minds. Others have told them how to think; and they believed those other people. Their minds are acting like tape recorders; they record and replay what others have said. People will often say, “Cathy, my mind is thinking me.” There is thinking in their mind, but they are NOT the source of those thoughts. If we aren’t the source of our thoughts, then who is? Why is that voice allowed to remain in our mind? We keep voices in our mental container because we think they have value. But I can tell you from decades of experience, there is no value in any voice in our mind. Voices in our minds are not ours; so they are what we must let go in order to get back to our own unique True Self’s point of view. If we don’t eliminate those voices, we can’t get to freedom.
As the show continued, it was apparent that the woman’s decorator mind told her that the house had to be whatever was in style. She talked and talked about the trends. She was very proud of her knowledge; but as you know, pride is a deadly sin for a very good reason. It doesn’t send us to hell. However, pride does cause us to trust the voices in our mind so completely that we never look beyond them. We never step outside of our own mental box. This woman was stuck in her own mental prison. Her design education and the collective trends told her how to think. So she was unable to have an original thought. I would not be hiring this designer to help me. I could look up trends on my own if I actually cared about trends.
When something in the house didn’t fit into one of her trends, i.e., her learned knowledge, but it was just beautiful, she literally did not know how to think about it. But she was sensing her True Self in those moments. She saw something original…something that was outside of her normal illusion. I could see it in her face and body language. She softened, and she looked happy. But the voice in her mind would come booming back at her like she wasn’t allowed to have such joy. People ask me all the time: Where did my joy go? This woman demonstrated where it goes. She could not sustain joy for more than a few seconds; then the voice kicked in and pushed it right back out of her experience.
I think this woman is probably more common than most would want to admit. Most people are very outer and other directed. They do know the trends. They spend far more time trying to impress other people than they do pleasing themselves. They fear being original or stepping too far outside of the collective box. I can’t imagine living that way. It would be so dull. Their True Self gets left in the dust in everything that they do. We can’t honor the voices in our mind and our True Self at the same time. Jesus called that “worshipping two masters.” It’s impossible. This is also the reason why most people never feel fulfilled or satisfied. Money can’t fix this problem. A great wellness program can’t fix this problem. Positive thinking can’t fix this problem. This problem is only going to disappear when we let go of those damn voices.
I have found that trends can be explained by following the money. Paint companies can’t make money if you don’t keep repainting your house every few years. Tile makers can’t make money if people don’t rip out the old tile and replace it with new tile every now and then. Fashion designers need us to change our clothes with the trends every year. Car companies need us to be embarrassed to drive a car that is more than a few years old. It’s all about the $$$. When we let go of our need to be on trend, our joy starts to bubble up. We start to remember who we truly are.
Today, most people don’t want things that are timeless because they are told not to want such things. Think about that as a metaphor for life and our minds. Our True Self is the timeless part of our mind. It’s also a key to our uniqueness. Our True Self would choose timeless things that we love. It would never care what another thinks because a True Self will never have us do anything that isn’t win win for all. Of course, that might mean that our friends and family who love trends will find our choices lacking. But so what? If we come from our True Self, we won’t care.
Most of the time when we are choosing trends or things that come and go, we are not honoring our True Selves’ point of view. It is fine to make that choice, but we should know why we are making the choice so that we can go back to our timeless True Self when we so desire. In other words, we should know what we think about that choice.
This woman’s mind was so programmed that she could not let go. She didn’t know how to think in a way that honored her True Self. So of course, she picked the trendy house, which according to her body language was her least favorite. She wanted the approval of others over her True Self’s uniqueness. That’s sad, but it’s very common.
I could pretty safely guess that the woman wore the pants in this family. She always drove. Their excuse was that the man couldn’t parallel park. They treated this like a learning disability. When he liked something in the house, she immediately pooh-poohed it as not trendy. She put a constant guilt trip on her husband so that he didn’t think he deserved what he wanted. If she couldn’t have everything that she wanted, there was no way that he was going to get something that he wanted. In the end, he decided that he really only wanted two things: a parking space so that he didn’t have to parallel park (LOL!) and a price within his budget. He didn’t get either. It looked like the woman won, but win lose is always lose lose. Neither person made their True Self happy. On the other hand, if either of them had gotten to their True Self and made the choice, they would have found the win win even if it took the other person a while to see it. In the end, both of them would have found lasting joy in that house.
