Evaluating missed opportunities
June 11, 2012
The other day I asked my mentors, Linda and Z if they could offer any information or words of advice on life reviews from a metaphysical approach. In my June 09 entry (further down this page), I posted some of what they wrote to me via email. Over the weekend, Linda also published the following article:
Sharing a Thought Provoking Inquiry: How can we Evaluate Missed Opportunities
(From Linda)
"I have published a new article on the website entitled, Evaluating Missed Opportunities. I was inspired to write this article in response to a very thought provoking inquiry I received regarding the significance of them. If missed opportunities and the significance of them is a matter of concern to you, this article will be very helpful in understanding the karmic role they may still be playing in your reality. You can access this article in downloadable pdf format on the My Article Page."
The Dragon of Personal Drama www.dragonofdrama.com Linda Labertew, Mpsy. D. Page 1
Evaluating Missed Opportunities ~
As if often the case, someone will share a thought provoking inquiry that inspires me to
further enhance on the subject either in a lesson or in an article so that visitors to the
Dragon of Personal Drama website can benefit from the inquiry as well. This particular
inquiry specifically focuses on re-evaluating missed opportunities of experience so as to
determine the degree of energy they still carry, the significance of them in the current
reality and whether or not they are significant in the afterlife. Due to the nature of this
inquiry it is best answered from a metaphysical / spiritual perspective because it
encompasses the principles of the science of mind as well as a belief in the afterlife.
Even if this goes against your religious or personal beliefs it would be in your best
interest to keep an open mind, to be willing to flex your personal or religious muscles for
the sake of expanding your perceptual vision.
If at some point during the course of your life you find yourself reflecting on your past
experiences, the memory of certain missed opportunities are likely to come to mind. As
these memories rise to the surface of your awareness you may be inclined to want to
weigh them out, to evaluate them and perhaps even to count the cost of having missed
the chance to act on those opportunities. Given your own mental and emotional
reaction to the recollection of these memories you may also be inclined to want to
harshly judge yourself for not having acted on them in which case you may also inflict a
degree of guilt upon yourself. As you reflect on those missed opportunities there can be
a psychological backlash that just might catch you off guard if you do not know how to
process and integrate the feelings and emotions that will rise up to the surface. Because
the matter of missed opportunities and the significance of them is an important aspect
of your current reality, this article, in keeping with the inquiry, will help you in the
process of re-evaluating your own missed opportunities by bringing to your awareness
the degree of energy they are carrying, and because of their significance in your current
reality, they very well may be manifesting in your personal experience in ways you are
not consciously aware of. Lastly is to consider the karmic significance of these missed
opportunities in the afterlife as the result of not acting on these potential experiences.
The psychological backlash occurs when there are underlying issues attached to those
missed opportunities that have not yet been identified and resolved. These issues can
remain undetected in your conscious awareness for years but such is not the case in
respect to the undesirable effects of them in your current reality. Unlike the undetected
issues, their karmic affects do not lie dormant but rather they are influencing your
reality behind the scenes. In an attempt to acknowledge and resolve these undetected
issues, your subconscious will send up metaphoric smoke signals along with a variety of
symbolic signposts, often in the form of archetypes that appear in your dreams and even
in your wake state as a means of getting your undivided attention. The longer you
ignore them, the more they will continue to unpleasantly manifest in your reality until
you finally acknowledge their presence. In addition, these underlying issues can also be
attached to other undetected issues to the extent where one feeds off the other and will
continue to do so until they are discovered and dealt with.
When you think about your missed opportunities of experience you will perceive them
in accordance with the beliefs you hold about them as being the truth, substantiated by
your thoughts and feelings which relates to the emotions attached to them. Therefore, it
is not just about the opportunities that were missed because they were not acted on, it is
more about the underlying reasons they were not acted on in the first place. Although
not every missed opportunity is karmically significant, a close up examination for the
purpose of revealing the underlying reasons you did not act on these opportunities
becomes necessary given the risk that undetected issues could very well be the
underlying causes of certain of the unpleasant effects that are occurring in your current
reality. Given that fact that the subconscious does not send up smoke signals without a
good cause should be sufficient evidence that something is going on below the surface of
your conscious awareness that is worth exploring. It is an endeavor that will ultimately
be well worth the time and effort it might take to figure it out, if for no other reason than
to put an end to any unpleasant attached side effects as well as to reduce the chance of
missing out on any further opportunities of experience that you will inevitably have to
come to terms with sooner or later.
A very important concern expressed in the inquiry was in regard to the matter of selfinflicted
pain as the result of a missed opportunity. In this respect the dots of missed
opportunities and self-inflicted pain are seldom connected as being related to one
another which in of itself is another justifiable reason to examine the underlying reasons
an opportunity was not acted on. An examination of this nature not only provides you
with the means to understand the underlying cause for the self-inflicted pain, it also
serves as a healing catalyst as well. Every opportunity missed out on carries its own
thought and feeling energy and to the degree or intensity of that energy, there is a level
of pain associated with it which also correlates to your beliefs and your perceptions.
Reflecting back on those missed opportunities from the viewpoint of a witness is far
more advantageous as opposed to viewing them as the participant. When viewing these
matters as the participant, you risk strong mental or emotional self-resistance that will
automatically hinder your attempts to get to the root cause as well as to block the path to
your healing. Incidentally, your healing will not get off to a good start if you are
maintaining an attitude of blame which includes blaming yourself. Life on the physical
plane is, after all, a continual journey of experiences and the consequent lessons
learned, all of which is very necessary for the sake of not just your personal growth but is
necessary for the sake of your spiritual evolution.
Such measures of self-inflicted pain will in time begin to wear on you, in fact, it will wear
you out mentally and emotionally speaking and if left unresolved it will begin to take its
toll on you physical body because the stress on your psyche needs an outlet, therefore, it
will manifest somewhere in your physical body. Many people suffer from physical
ailments that conventional medicine can only biologically attribute the causes to.
However, practitioners who are open-minded to the benefits of holistic treatments will
take into consideration any out of the ordinary life experiences as being the possible
basis for the physical discomfort or disease. I was taken by surprise when I encountered
a series of life event questions asked on a medical form at a conventional medical center.
The fact that this level of holistic mindset has seeped into the convention of mainstream
medicine should be sufficient evidence that body, mind and soul are all connected, thus
if one is out of whack, the other two are carrying the additional load which eventually
causes a strain in every aspect of your being, resulting in the body being put in a state of
discomfort and dis-ease. So although missing out on an opportunity may not seem like
such a big deal and is something you think you can just sweep under the carpet, forget
about or simply chalk it up to being your lot in life, or think that it was not God’s will for
you, may in actuality be an underlying cause that is contributing to certain ongoing
problems that keep materializing undesirable experiences in your life because they have
not yet been identified. Determining the root cause requires not only an indefinite
period of time and effort to allow these underlying issues to surface into your conscious
awareness, it also requires your willingness to consciously process and integrate them as
they are revealed because they may contain some very unpleasant and difficult to digest
truths you were not necessarily prepared to deal with.
Another aspect of this inquiry was in regard to the significance or the weight that missed
opportunities carry if not yet understood, that is, the truth has not yet been revealed or
is simply not seen. The significance or the karmic weight of any missed opportunity
relates to the degree of impact it is still having in your reality due to the underlying and
undetected root causes, whether you are aware of their presence or not. Unresolved
issues, regardless of their basis, do not go away because you are not aware of them,
because you do not understand them or because you simply do not see them for what
they really are. Therefore, the significance of every missed opportunity is that it can
play an unseen and undesired karmic role in your life, manifesting in ways you would
not think or know to connect the dots. However, once the underlying causes have been
revealed and you begin to better understand the karmic role these issues have been
playing in your life, it changes the energy of them in which case the affects will either be
reduced or the affects will be eliminated all together; either way the changes in your
reality will be relative to your own beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings.
A very beneficial approach to getting to the bottom of such underlying issues begins by
taking the first step which in this case is to suggest that you make a list of all your
missed opportunities, including the ones that seen irrelevant. Using your list as a basis
you will want to select only one of those missed opportunities to begin your examination
with, generally speaking, this is the one that will jump right off the page or has the most
meaning to you. The second step is to take into account your feelings at that time,
especially the emotions you felt then and even take note of the intensity of those
emotions – this is not the time to hold back any feelings so feel free to let them loose but
please do so in safe quarters. In other words do not unleash these feelings in the
presence of anyone who is not trained to support your endeavor as this will only make
matters worse which is why putting them in writing is a safe alternative. The third step
is to examine the beliefs you held at the time about yourself and the opportunity. The
fourth step is to examine how you actually perceived the opportunity that was presented
including anyone involved. The fifth step is to examine the obstacles that appeared to
be standing in your path and any roadblocks that seemed to have prevented you from
acting on the opportunity. As you work through each of the steps you are likely to find
that the obstacles and roadblocks you encountered were not the result of any person,
place or thing, but were indeed the result of undetected causes that were contributing to
your own thinking pattern, your feelings and emotions, your own beliefs, and the
manner in which you perceived the opportunity as well as anyone involved. As you work
through these steps these underlying causes will begin to surface and as you continue to
work through your list of missed opportunities the picture will begin to get much
clearer. Don’t be surprised if you begin to see one or more common threads woven
through those missed opportunities such as fear, anxiety, intimidation, lack of
confidence and courage; feelings of insecurity, inferiority and a lack of acceptance and
self-worth, just to mention a few. It is when you reach this point that things can get a
little or a lot sticky because it can be very hard to come to terms with the uncomfortable
truths that will surface. But through the process of self-examination, you will see just
how those missed opportunities were actually missed out on, the undesirable effects
they were still generating, thereby negatively affecting your reality and how they were
linked to one another by means of those common threads that were revealed to you in
the process of your self-examination. Your willingness to see the process through will be
well worth any uncomfortable mental or emotional undoing. And even though a clear
picture will become very apparent after you have worked through all the steps, you will
find that over the course of time that same picture will undergo subtle or more dramatic
changes and alterations as other issues not yet revealed rise up to the surface of your
conscious awareness that can only occur under certain conditions.
Concerns were expressed in the inquiry that related to the significance of missed
opportunities as it pertains to the bigger picture not being fully revealed yet. To
understand the bigger picture is to recognize, from a metaphysical and spiritual
perspective, that the very act of a physical life does not occur by accident or is the result
of a conception by chance, but that birth is intended for the sake of achieving or
overcoming something of particular importance, a matter that is unique to every
incarnating soul. However, because of the lack of conscious connection to the nonphysical
realm, the conscious memory forgets its origins as well as its intended purpose
for its physical incarnation in spite of signposts and synchronicities that serve as
reminders. Consequently, physical life can becomes a journey chock full of karmic
pitfalls, obstacles, roadblocks, ditches and detours making it very hard to accomplish or
achieve the intended purpose - the bigger picture. As the result of ongoing changes and
alterations that occurs with every choice and decision you make throughout the course
of your life, the bigger picture is always in a state of flux. Therefore, the degree of
incidence and significance in terms of the bigger picture cannot realistically be
ascertained from such a wavering and limited perspective, much less to be revealed. But
even though opportunities fell by the wayside, and experiences occurred that were not
necessarily intended and certainly not desired, the bigger picture does not rest on who
or what you should have become or whose lives you might have influenced as the result.
The bigger picture is still being formed; it is still an idea under construction and is very
much subjected to the changes and alterations that will continue to occur throughout
your life. There is nothing to stop you from becoming who or what you still desire to
become even if it is only an aspect of your original intentions or for that matter, whose
lives you can still influence in a positive way, but this can only be accomplished by
coming to terms with any mental or emotional blockages that threaten to hinder your
success in this regard – that level of success being the realization of the bigger picture.
When you take the matter of reincarnation into consideration from a metaphysical or
spiritual perspective, you begin to realize that the wheel of physical life and death is not
as infinite as you might think, not so much because there is a risk of time running out as
there is the risk of slowing down your own personal evolution. Some people are of the
belief that because the non-physical aspect of life is infinite or eternal, one can
experience an endless number of incarnations, thus resolving karmic issues at their
leisure. There is a time limit in the sense that the longer it takes you to resolve the
issues that can only be resolved on the physical plane, the longer it takes to move onto
higher planes of realities that exist in other non-physical dimensions, in other realms
and even in other worlds. This world that you are having your physical experience in is
but one dimension of reality and as such has its built in limitations that are not
experienced in other dimensions, where the illusion of objective reality is not subjected
to sensory perceptions. Every person plays an individual and collective role in the
progression of human evolution. The evolution of the world at large is ultimately
affected when its people, individually speaking, are not taking responsibility for their
own actions, thus slowing down the collective wheel of evolution. This is a message that
cannot be stressed enough and is one that the Buddha spoke about rather emphatically.
In closing I sincerely hope that in sharing the very thought provoking inquiry I received
has shed some light on any undesirable effects you may be experiencing in your own
reality as the result of your own missed opportunities. If you have any questions,
thoughts, comments or you get stuck trying to figure out the psychological impact from
your missed opportunities, please feel free to contact me.
Many Blessings,
Linda