We are living in a world where all we see is the tip of an iceberg, the classical tip, that is part of a quantum mechanical iceberg. The world we live in today doesn’t necessarily inspire us to think in ways that will allow us to become masters of our own destinies. It often encourages us to look for solutions to our problems outside of ourselves and subsequently minimise our mind’s potential. For example, if you lost your keys inside your house, you wouldn’t go outside to look for them. The power within will always guide us, and I think we as a species have forgotten that. What you think you become. If you want to continue living an average life “just comfortably” things will never change, especially if your attitude stays the same. You have to face your fears, only then will learn that fear is only a false expectation appearing real. Routine is good, but only if it serves you well. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad about living modestly, but living with guilt, depression, or self-doubt, isn’t fulfilling your true potential.
To help break down the status quo and engineering of your life experience so far, you should ask yourself, what is reality? Is it what your eyes see, or what your brain sees? The truth is, the brain cannot tell the difference between the reality that it experiences in the present moment, and what it remembers. So, what does that mean for you? It means you can reorganise reality with thought alone. You are able to break down parts of your personality that are not serving you and rewrite them in ways that will benefit you. There is a world of possibility existing in and around you, so do not think that you are too old or too weak to change.
The personality that you have associated with up until now is otherwise known as your ego. This can manifest as negative self-talk, doubt, or even a little voice that is never satisfied. Unless you are fully conscious and aware of your thought process, you will continue to feed your ego with power and it doesn’t necessarily know what is good for you. It is your filter on the world around you, your conscious thoughts and beliefs, your labels, and your sense of identity. The ego can be useful and self-motivating but as its Latin translation of ‘I’ suggests, it can be selfish and self-centred. The more you associate with it and your subconscious personality construct, the harder it can become to break down self-made blocks to meaningful change.
Your brain is a highly complex organ. Think of it as a computer programme that enables you to experience reality. You are the programmer, behind the programme, who writes the codes that can override aspects of your personality. Your ego ‘is’ the computer programme, so if you are to identify as the ego, you will always limit yourself to a fate that is out of your control. This is not your true self coming through. Your true self resides in the consciousness behind it, the programmer, who is able to observe everything that goes on. You must connect with this intelligence to disengage with destructive patterns responsible for any unhappiness in your life. Once connected, you will ensure that you make virtuous decisions from a place of non-judgment and observe your thoughts without attaching to them.
The ego tries its best to protect you, but the protection it brings doesn’t always best serve you. Over time your brain will match patterns that already exist within through conditioning. The more you identify with these negative, fictitious constructs, the more you will find yourself drifting from your true self, and subsequently your ultimate potential. Neural networks that are activated more frequently than others, will develop stronger and thicker synapses. This can lead to all manner of problems as potentially harmful thoughts and identities can become the dominant driving forces in your mind. Over time, thickening neural networks will only acknowledge such favourable stimuli. This results in the brain reassessing what it believes to be possible, blocking all manner of possibilities.
There is an interesting story that allegedly took place when Columbus’s Armada arrived off the shores of the Caribbean for the first time. The natives on the beaches were physically unable to see the ships even though they were sat on the horizon. The reason why they could not see them was that the natives had no knowledge or experience of ships existing. The shaman amongst them noticed the ripples in the ocean and began to wonder what was causing the effect. Day after day he gazed at the disturbance in the water, trying to figure out what was happening. Eventually, he was able to see the ships and reported this back to the people on the beach. Because they trusted and believed in him, they too were then able to see the boats sitting out on the water.
This story suggests that the more you open your mind to all possibilities, the better chance you have in manifesting things that have eluded you up until now.
Another example that conveys the same message, but through a different medium, is Plato’s allegory of the cave. In this story, Plato describes a group of people chained to a wall in a cave for all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected onto the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ only reality but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses. One day a prisoner was freed and fled the cave. In doing so he saw the fire and realised that the shadows weren’t true objects. When he returned to tell the other prisoners, he was blinded because his eyes were not accustomed to natural sunlight. The prisoners saw this and were afraid to ever leave the cave, insisting that their reality was comfortable enough.
This is an interesting allegory because it reinforces the notion that our personality isn’t just an expression of ourselves, but also a defence mechanism. We all begin life with a clean slate. Some of us are conditioned to believe that the world is our oyster, whilst others adopt the narrow outlook of their parents. Modern society is trenched in fear, so the likelihood that you fall into the latter group of people is higher than not. Relinquishing fearful defence mechanisms that have done nothing but institutionalise your personality can be a difficult step to take and is often one that requires faith.
If you don’t take control over your thoughts you will never realise that it is you who calls the shots. You do not have to listen to others in order to validate yourself. If everyone did that then there would be no great achievements. Do not just “live within your means” because who is to decide what your means really are?
Whatever has happened before, your past has no physical influence over how you decide to live in the present moment. Many people allow their past to affect how they interact with the world today. For example, you might think you are not worthy of love because an authority figure walked out on you whilst you were growing up. This can lead to an inferiority complex, but it shouldn’t mean that it should hinder future abundance in your life. Another way of looking at this is to picture yourself standing at the back of a boat and looking out at the wake. Imagine that the path of the boat represents your past. Now ask yourself what is powering the ship and driving it forward in the opposite direction. It is the wind in the sails or the engine below of course! It is the present-moment energy that is driving the boat forward and the path it has taken has no influence on where it’s going. Put simply, many of us allow our past to dictate our future.
Try not to hold on to pain or suffering, because resentment is never justified. I heard a wise saying once that sums this up perfectly, “It is not the snake bite that kills you, it is the venom”. Whether your partner had an affair, or someone did you wrong, it is never the act of pain that causes you heartache, it is the thought process thereon that does the damage. When you think of it in simple terms such as these, you can see that it is the ego that is making such an event seem unbearable. If you repeat negative memories over and over again throughout your life, you will begin to attach and bond to them, subsequently identifying with them. This affects how you choose to live life going forward. The decisions you make should be made from a place of love, where you are present and in full control. Do not allow the venom to pump through your veins, because over time resentment will only make you unwell, both physically and emotionally.
It is important that you release negative attachments in the form of forgiveness. Forgiving is one of the most sacred acts you can perform. When you come from a place of humility, you are able to surpass your ego. Taoism teaches that the ocean is king to a thousand rivers and streams because it lies below them. This puts it perfectly, sometimes, in order to better your situation, you need to surrender.
Mark Twain illustrates this beautifully, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it”. It is only when we truly forgive, we are able to release the pain.
Resentment is never justified. Holding onto such emotion will only affect you negatively in the long run. Over time, attachments like these will catch up with you, but not in the way you wanted. When you realise that it is only you who continues to suffer, and not the person or thing that caused the pain, then the error of your ways will be revealed. Thoughts are merely thoughts but they can become venomous when relived in a continuous cycle.
When we lose touch with our true essence, things can turn nasty. The late Wayne Dyer thought of it this way, highlighting it perfectly, so I shall paraphrase it here. Nature heals wounds as a scab, the beautiful natural way of divine intelligence. It doesn’t think twice when doing so and will heal in the most efficient possible way. With emotional wounds, however, we get in the way of what should be a simple process by holding onto the pain. Could you ever imagine your body’s intelligence keeping a wound open for some time before it healed? Nature unless obstructed, would never allow this to happen, because the wound could become infected. This is precisely what we do with our emotions, and it can result in the manifestation of physical and mental health illness.
When it comes to your health, it is important to understand that your mind plays a huge role in it. Almost 90 percent of all disease is now attributed to stress. Being able to maintain a positive perspective will enable you to encourage homeostasis in the body. Listening to and understanding your body will enable you to become the master of your own physiology.
When negative thoughts arise, your body performs an operation that is involuntary, and you have no say in the damage you are doing to yourself on a cellular level. The hypothalamus is your little mini factory that manufactures certain chemicals that match particular emotions that you experience. These chemicals are called peptides. There are chemicals for anger, chemicals for sadness, and chemicals for every other emotion.
The moment a chemical is produced it is released into the bloodstream and sent to cells all around your body. Once the peptide finds the receptor on the cell, it docks and changes its nature by changing its nucleus. Your cells will gradually crave more and more of these particular peptides, thus encouraging the brain to produce more of the emotions that generate them.
Eventually, your cells will need higher and higher fixes in order to satisfy themselves and this is how we can become addicted to finding gratification in negative emotions. We become so addicted to the stress in our lives that we can’t quit our jobs or leave a damaging relationship because the stimulus and responses that produce the chemistry cloud our choices. Not only this, but it can damage the production of future cells, causing harmful mutations which can result in cancers and other diseases.
Unless you are able to observe your thoughts and change your reaction to negativity, you will continue to relinquish control of your emotions to your ego.
The law of attraction states that you don’t get what you want, you get what you are. This goes hand in hand with bodily health and ego work. You will always attract the vibrational state that you hold at that particular time. Whatever you hope to transform in your life, you need to be matching it with your inner reality, so that the desired vibration finds you attractive enough to resonate with you.
Most people won’t recognise the law of attraction working in their lives and will usually put miraculous occurrences down to mere coincidences. We devalue the definition of coincidences nowadays. The mathematical terminology of the word states a coincidence is two sides fitting together perfectly. It’s like when you are waiting for a bus and then two come along at once or when you’re on a winning streak. Synchronicities come in all shapes and sizes, but you must remember that the reality you put out is the reality that you will attract.
In giving is what you receive. What you give out represents who you are inside. Wayne Dyers’ orange analogy really puts this into perspective. He says that no matter how hard you squeeze an orange, all that you will ever get out of it is orange juice. This seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Because that is what is inside. So now apply this metaphor to yourself. When someone squeezes you, i.e. they say something that you do not like, or behave towards you in a way that you find offensive, out of you comes anger, hatred, fear, or anxiety. Is that who you really are inside? The reason that comes out of you is because of the way that they said it, or how they did it, but the reality is, what comes out, is what’s inside, and if you don’t like what’s inside, you can change. You live your life inside and it isn’t what people do to you, but how you react to what people do to you that makes the difference between you being a fully functioning person or a victim. That is the part that you can change.
When adopting a new school of thought such as this, you need to have faith in what you are doing, because this really is a leap for most. When a cat falls from a tree, or a baby tumbles down the stairs, they go limp and come off unscathed. An adult, on the other hand, would tense up and do more damage than it was worth. Our adopted programming doesn’t always intend on doing what is best for us. When the going gets tough, sometimes you just need to allow things to flow through you, what will be, will be, so to speak. Any resistance to it will only result in more detriment.
Truly enlightened individuals will come to realise that nothing said or done can cause them pain on the inside because it is how they perceive such experiences that dictate how they feel.
Taoists agree that in order to live a virtuous and fulfilling life, you should be like water. Water is flexible and can flow in any direction. Laozi, a Chinese Taoist philosopher, points out, “Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid, and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.”
From now train your brain to think about what you do want and pay less attention to the things that you don’t want in your life. Reaffirm positive affirmations every day and catch yourself talking negatively by acting as the observer of your thoughts. Reframing such thoughts with positive ones will help, but only if you are persistent with it in order to give your brain a chance to adapt to your new school of thought.
By taking responsibility for your circumstances, you will be taking a step forward in re-establishing control over your life. You call the shots, so why not start your life transformation now?