All that counts for anything is what you do with Now. A year from now has no bearing on your current life experience; what may be a month from now will bear no impact on what Is Now; nor is even a minute from now a thing of any significance to your present moment. The power to change and enjoy your life experience may only be asserted from where you are Now, at this exact moment. Therefore the only moment that counts for anything is the moment that is currently before you. Yesterday is long gone. Later is of no consequence. Making the most of what is Now is all that matters. So be in the moment. Be present. And be wholly open to your Now experience because what’s the alternative?
Look at what happens to your life experience when you make thoughts of what was or of what might be the focus of your present moment. Is there ever any peace to be had from these states of mind? When your thoughts are in the spirit of hungering to go back to relive or change what was, it makes what Is a miserable experience. Likewise, when your thoughts are in the spirit of either dreading or yearning what is to come, it makes realizing enjoyment in what actually Is, impossible because your mind is always someplace else; someplace not here. Yet here is indeed where you are. To deny this does nothing but invite restlessness, discontentment and frustration into your life experience because you are removing yourself from the place of your power. Now is all that matters. So think Now; be Now; live Now!
I would venture to say that everybody has at least one something they’re prone to feel self conscious about - a little corner of yourself that you’ve never quite felt secure in.
A lot of the insecurities we have, we take on in our childhood. These are the uncertainties we tend to hold onto (more so) out of habit even after it becomes clear that we’ve outgrown them. Case and point, from the ages of about six to eleven I was a heavy child. It was an issue that eventually came to even out well though with a little help from puberty and a lot of self education about exercise and proper eating habits. I haven’t been “heavy” since the seventh grade yet I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I am still very much a weight conscious person. “Miss Fitness” is what my aunt likes to call it. To this day, I’m very mindful of what I eat; and unless I have a bug or it happens to be that one day that comes around every month like a utility bill (excuse me guys), I’m deliberate about getting my exercise six days a week. I lost the excess weight I had been carrying around a long time ago. But the mindset of the girl I was, dressed in that overweight body, is in some ways still with me. How quickly would those thoughts of inadequacy I used to berate myself with come rushing back to me if my weight were to ever get out of control again? It could be said, and I would be hard pressed to much dispute it, that I have been working hard to never have to know the answer to that question. I could chalk my present sensitivity up to having suffered the humiliation of teasing during my heavy years (which did happen), but that would be a cop out. It’s the fault of others that I’m this way. That’s never true. What is true, and what I only in my later life came to understand, is that the only pain I experienced from the jokes I used to be the butt of during those awkward years, came as a result of my having accepted as true the put downs that were voiced by other people. Had I not actually validated those spiteful words with my own belief in their legitimacy, they never would have harmed me. I never would have lived that hurtful experience. I get that now, and I’m so glad that I do because it saves me a lot of pain.
Allow me to share with you a lesson it took me years to realize: Any judgment that another directs at you only actually becomes about you if you accept their judgment as true. Whenever you feel demeaned or belittled by what someone else says about you, know that it’s not that person that is causing you to have this experience. It’s you. If you ever feel degraded by criticism it will never be because someone else is judging you, it will always be because you are judging you. It is your own judgmental thoughts that are creating the experience you’re suffering through. Your thoughts - not theirs. You are doing it all to yourself because (like a mental copycat) you are the one who is now also thinking those destructive thoughts. You are the one who is accepting those destructive thoughts as legitimate. And therefore, you are the one who is experiencing the consequences of what you, yourself, are creating.
We all create our own worlds, our own experiences in life. And the only way to claim the undeniable power you have to change those things about your experience you may dislike is to own up to your responsibility of having created those undesirables to begin with.
The power to heal is the capacity of Life to recognize Itself as vibrant and well.
We can tell ourselves some pretty outlandish and destructive things sometimes. But what happens when those passing pessimistic thoughts of ours become the ideas we decide to give real credence to? Thoughts like I’m such an idiot. Life is unfair. I just don’t have what it takes. Nothing is ever going to change…What we think and believe about ourselves and about the world around us affects our personal life experience. Our thoughts coupled with our beliefs determine what we attract to our life’s situation. Destructive thoughts give birth to unsatisfying life experiences. Therefore, in order to know satisfaction in our lives, we have to be increasingly accepting of constructive life outlooks. We have to take those destructive thoughts we’ve been nurturing and steadily turn them until we are able to see them in a new, more positive, light. Many of the discouraging things we repeat to ourselves, and eventually grow to actually believe in, are pretty common. Let’s explore one.
A common destructive personal thought: Any thought in the nature of, “I lack… (Fill in the blank).” It can be whatever. It’s the false belief that you are deficient in something such as money.
The erroneous world perception which fosters this destructive thought: That there is a limited amount of resources available in the world. Some have more, some have less. And your lot in this is determined by the chaotic law of universal luck or Godly favor. It’s a separatist viewpoint (as in you see yourself as existing separate from the world around you).
What’s more to the Truth on this: That there actually is no limitation of the resources available to us. The only resource of true substance is energy; and this is a supply God is constantly pouring out and showering All of us with. God’s love is the energy that sustains All things and God doesn’t play favorites with this gift. We all have equal access to the abundant love (the limitless energy) of God, it’s what we do with this resource (how we spend this energy) which determines our manifest “lot” in life.
There is no such thing as randomness or luck either. Such would imply that chaos exists in the universe and even a cursory examination of the universe’s design or the consistency of nature should reveal to us how absurd the postulation of a random universe is.
When you grow more cognizant of the holistic nature of the Universe, you gain an increasing appreciation for just how connected you are to everything around you. So the question then becomes how could you lack for anything when you are literally connected to All things (through God)? And from this connection, from this unlimited resource, you create the reality you personally experience in life even while Life Itself is One. Everything outside of you is merely a reflection of something believed to be inside of you. Therefore, any “lack” you perceive in life merely mirrors an area within yourself you believe to be deficient. And this is evidence that this is an area in your way of thinking which needs to be worked on; it’s not evidence that proves that reality is one particular way or another.
Your thoughts on this?
(An excerpt from Evette’s Forthcoming Ebook 21 Days to a Changed Life)
Have you ever shared this sentiment? Even when I know I should be grateful, many times I still find it difficult to bring myself to actually feel this way. Why is this? I should be grateful for life, I should be grateful for family, I should be grateful for every healthy breath I take… I know all this, I truly believe all this, and yet I usually feel strangely unimpressed by so many things I should have profound appreciation for. And yet those things which I should be grateful for everyday, every moment of my life, most of the time they just feel very commonplace to me. Does it have to be that I only feel grateful for things which, at one time or another, I’ve been forced to do without (ask a person with severe chronic asthma how much gratitude they have for each of their breaths). Is there any way to get passed the indifference of routine and actually feel as my heart would have me feel? Is there any way to bring myself to feel gratitude? To answer this let us first examine where ingratitude comes from. When we become very used to something we tend to take whatever that something is for granted. We become cocky and locked into our presumptions about the things we believe we have all figured out, unwilling to be open to the consistency of change taking place within those very things we supposedly know everything about. We assume that just because change may be taking place exceedingly slowly, that this must mean that no change (at least any change of consequence) is taking place and that therefore means that we no longer have to bother with paying attention to it. So we stop being present and instead choose to view many things in life through the prism of our stagnant beliefs about them.
Have you ever had the experience of being amazed at your own colossal absentmindedness? Ever wonder where you were when your childhood passed? Or what happened to that little boy who used to run to you every time there was a thunder clap; and when did this articulate young man who’s now big enough to act like he’s my protector take his place? Why does it seem like I’m just waking up from the longest nap ever? Change only seems sweeping when you haven’t been paying attention for a good while. It can be so easy to become locked in your own head. To have your responses to life stem from the habits you’ve formed instead of out of real-time awareness about what’s going on around you. This is the mental environment in which ingratitude is fostered. The solution to how to break out of this dull, languorous, gratitude stymieing perception is quite simple. You must begin again to actually think and be present about things you feel no gratitude for.
It is true of All life, when you look once at something it will be one way; look again (and I mean really look again) and it will be something new. In every single moment, every single thing is brand new again. Being present is about being attentive to these changes even when they are exceedingly subtle. And when you learn to appreciate the ceaseless evolution of the things in your life you will grow in your gratitude for the things in your life. No two sunrises are exactly the same. The people in your life are constantly evolving. Every breath you take has a unique rhythm all to its own. Sharpen your skill of tuning into these subtleties and you will know a richness in your life experience which is overflowing with gratitude. Take nothing for granted. Never assume you have anything all figured out because the thing you think you have all figured out, blink, and it’s something new.
(An excerpt from Evette’s Forthcoming Ebook 21 Days to a Changed Life)
Gratitude is like spiritual fertilizer. It stimulates the satisfaction of desires and causes these fulfilling experiences to grow in abundance throughout your life. Let’s say you have a desire to be rich. If you have a limited view of what richness is, you won’t be able to see all the areas of your life which are blessed with this quality. And because you can’t see it, you (as a result) will not express gratitude for it. And the consequence of this ingratitude is that richness is unable to grow in your life experience. Your limited perspective is choking it. It has no room to prosper. If you want to spread your desire, don’t choke it where it grows. Be open to All the many ways your desire may be expressed and be appreciative of every demonstration of it in your experience. For instance, if you’re blessed with a feeling of richness through your experiences with your family or through your hobbies or through long lazy walks through scenic landscapes, even if you are not yet blessed with the wealth of material resources you should be grateful for these other ways your desire for richness have been made manifest in your life. Don’t allow a narrow idea of what richness is prevent you from enjoying the experiences in your life which are rich. Your enjoyment will promote even more manifestations of richness in your experience (perhaps even that of material wealth) as your enjoyment is an expression of your gratefulness for what you already have. And it is this openness to your connection with your desire which promotes miracles.
In that interim between having a dream and waking up from a dream, have you ever experienced a moment where you’ve forgotten yourself? Such forgetful moments are actually common occurrences in these in-between states, between sleep and wakefulness. It was during one of these experiences that realize I something pivotal.
Up until this particular occurrence it was easier for me to associate the idea of “attachments” with physical things - people, places and objects. Sometimes we obsessively cling to familiar tangibles for fear of losing what they have come to represent to us. When we convince ourselves that such objects are the source of our comfort and confidence in life they become our attachments. Our money, our cars, our houses, our designer whatever, our latest techno gizmos, the town we grew up in or maybe the one we grew up to move to, our lovers… Each of us has our own special inventory of physical somethings which we would rather fight the world trying before we willingly let go of them. We identify ourselves with the physical possessions we impart the most value to. This understanding was not new to me. But attachments don’t always have to have a physical form. I knew this too (but I knew it merely in the academic sense of the concept of knowing). It wasn’t until this incident that I was able to associate an actual experience to this academic understanding.
It started when the alarm clock jolted me awake mid dream. The shock of the abrupt change in my environment brought on a temporary confusion and for a moment everything was gone. I had no memory of what I had been dreaming, nor any tie to the world I awoke to. For just a split second I was aware of myself as being conscious and that was pretty much all. The absence of having any thought to readily identify myself with was an experience I wasn’t used to. The differentness of the feeling was disorienting and I was quick to panic. I craved an explanation for where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. I craved a sense of purpose, something I could hold onto so I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed by the sheer openness of the mental space I was in. It was too much to take in all at once. It made me feel exposed and vulnerable. I reacted defensively as I instantly set about trying to re-call all the thoughts and perceptions which I knew to be familiar to me. I was desperate to get a grip on my reality. In the state of limbo I was in all my usual thoughts and perceptions were for some reason removed from me, I had to actively go about re-collecting them. I realize then how much of a sense of comfort I get from holding onto certain views and conceptions. These views and conceptions are the things that form the fabric of the character I play in life. I was used to the emotions these recurring thoughts inspired. They were what made me feel like me. Being so acutely aware of the cause and effect relationship in this experience is what really brought home for me that while I could (for the most part) care less about material things and material labels, I was indeed very attached to mental things and the mental labels I liked to attribute to myself. I am assured. I am respectful. I live up to what I promise I’m going to do… Despite all the baggage that comes along with my definitions of what these mental labels mean to me, I have been adamant in my determination to hold onto them. I could now plainly see, however, how much false comfort I was deriving from clinging to familiar ideas. Yeah I’ve been growing, but now I have a better appreciation for how far I still have to go.
The lesson here is this:
Your thoughts are not indigenous to you. You have to deliberately claim your perceptions. Every moment of your life you are intentionally creating the person you choose to be, the role you choose to play in life. Everything about you and your life experience is by your design. The choice is always yours. Even more insidious than our desperate artificial need to hold onto tangible things, is our desperate artificial need to hold onto a habited way of thinking. My experience in this particular in-between state from sleep to wakefulness made me realize how addicted I am to the role I have chosen to play in life.
I was never so keenly aware of the power I have to either hold or let go of my thoughts and beliefs as I was in this particular dreamy moment. It wasn’t until this moment that I became wholly mindful of my actively reaching to pull back familiar thoughts. And never before had I been so conscious of the emotions inspired by these thoughts once I’d reclaimed them. Though I felt a sense of security from the familiarity of bathing in old ideas, not all of what I called back was pleasant. But the fact that I have the power to hold also means that I have the power to release. I can let it all go, if I so choose, any time I want. I can start fresh; remake myself as many times as I want. And the same power of transformation applies to you too.
There are two kinds of change. There is the change of appearance, which is of a superficial nature. And there is the change of heart which occurs when one chooses to see an idea or situation in a different light. This latter type of change is of a more substantive nature. It’s change from the inside out (which is the only Real change possible). Change that occurs from the outside in has to do with presentation and has nothing whatsoever to do with essentials. This brand of change does not reflect genuine transformation; it is merely a reflection of how a single state or condition has the potential to present itself in multiple ways. For example, you can be inwardly unhappy and bitter because you believe the world is out to get you in a situation where outwardly you appear to have little financial resources. And you can also be inwardly unhappy and bitter because you believe the world is out to get you in a situation where outwardly you appear to have abundant financial resources. So even if you start out materially poor and this outward condition changes to appear more favorable, such success does not necessarily mean that your bitterness and unhappiness will disappear. Yes, the package may be different but the contents will be just the same if the transformation does not arise from the within. Change, in order to be substantive, must be rooted in mental transmutation. The changes we see are just the outward show of things. The changes we feel are what actually indicate either true spiritual development or relative stagnation.
Know that if you’re afraid to fail, you will never succeed. In the pursuit of happiness, fear should not be looked upon as that thing that turns you around and keeps you boxed in. Fear should be valued as the doorway to a fantastic adventure. Why? Because the only way to realize that you have no limitations is to step outside of your comfort zone and experience how open life truly is to you.
