Core issues are vasanas that go so deep that they define who we consider ourselves to be and how we present ourselves in life.
A vasana is itself an automatic reaction pattern that has its roots in an earlier, similar traumatic event which has seared its way into our consciousness.
Some vasanas are so deeply felt that they have what Werner Erhard would have called “command value” over us. We obey their dictates and construct our lives based on what they tell us. These are our core issues.
This is not uniformly bad, by the way. But it has consequences.
One of my core issues was that I watched domestic violence in my family and promised my mother at an early age that I would help her “some day.” I eventually became a refugee adjudicator specializing in gender issues.
My core issue saw me become an adjudicator in the first place and that was not necessarily a bad thing. I was fulfilling my promise to my mother to help her some day.
But it also left me with an anger around gender issues. That’s something I’ve needed to overcome in recent years and haven’t necessarily completed.
Here’s a second example.
I was the runt of the litter in my family, which meant that no one listened to me. The three older folks would confer on any one thing and no one would give the time of day to my opinion on anything.
I grew up with a strong desire to be heard, to be listened to. So what does a person become in that situation? Well, how about a blog editor? Makes sense, eh?
Or a counsellor who uses deep listening as his therapy. Do unto others, etc.
Or a person who teaches the theory of listening to his company? Maybe I’ll teach others to listen to me?
Or a person who sits for countless hours a day listening to people fleeing persecution. Or….
We can have more than one core issue, obviously. And many of us lightworkers have planned before birth to place ourselves after birth in situations where core issues develop to motivate us, given the work we have to perform.
Our core issues send us in certain directions and then we have to free ourselves from the remaining negative consequences, the automatic patterns we have which, living on past their usefulness, have to be seen and retired.
I have a friend whose core issue is she doesn’t want to disappoint anyone (she disappointed her mother by being born a girl, instead of a boy) and now she excels – so as not to disappoint.
Given her light work, excelling is not a bad thing. And now that she’s aware of her core issue, she can let go of the negative side effects and simply excel. She’s about the fastest learner I’ve ever met.
So core issues have their good and bad sides. They’re motivators, as Linda Dillon has said, and they have consequences.
How do core issues fit with false grids and paradigms? A core issue was formed from a traumatic event long ago. It has command value over us.
A false grid or paradigm is a way of seeing things that we inherited as a member of society. Some false grids have been purposely “sold” to us, like many of our religious viewpoints, and had as their purpose social control.
False grids and paradigms impact our behavior, sometimes by hiding some things from our view or consideration, at other times by mandating ways we “need” to act. But they’re not derived from our own personal past and may not have come about as a result of trauma.
How do we “source” or complete a core issue? Jesus offered a good description in “The Third Way.” (1) It won’t work for us to suppress ourselves in the face of the core issue (first way). It won’t work for us to project it onto others (second way), which is what we (OK, I) most commonly do.
It does work to “be with” the core issue and allow the mind to reveal to us what the source of it is (third way).
In my case, when I went to source or complete the core issue of wanting to be heard with the help of a friend coaching me, I got back in my recollection to a colleague at the Immigration and Refugee Board who would studiously ignore me, and then back to a girl in my Grade Twelve class who would do the same and I stopped there.
But my friend had me look deeper and I finally got back to being a very young child among three older people in my family who would not listen to me. It was then that the light bulb went on, I had a moment of recognition (an “Aha!” or “Eureka!” moment), and felt release from the core issue.
A core issue identified and known thoroughly usually releases its grip. Jesus had the last word on that as well: “The truth shall make you free.”
Not only will the Big Truth of who we are release us from the round of existence, but the little truth of what is driving us will release us from the unwanted condition or upset.
Footnotes
(1) “Jeshua via Pamela Kribbe: The Third Way,” Jan. 26, 2014, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/01/jeshua-the-third-way/