Take a few moments to check within and get an honest answer to this question. The answer to this question will give you the reason your external reality is the way it is. If you answered an affirmative “yes”, then it’s a surety that your external reality is one that reflects a lot of well-being and abundance. If you answered with a “mostly”, then your reality will presently have some elements of negativity in it and some elements of well-being. If you answered with a “no”, then it’s a given that your present reality will mostly have elements of negativity in it like lack, struggle, illness and insecurity. The way you feel about yourself is what is reflected by your external reality, there is no getting away from this truth. It’s not what you do, it’s not about how educated you are or how many qualifications you have, it’s not about how hard working you are or how knowledgeable you are, it’s all about what you feel about yourself.
Working hard is futile if you are not aligned with yourself
A lot of people try to use action to compensate for the lack of love that they feel for themselves. They somehow force themselves to work hard in a bid to feel good about themselves, but this is a very mediocre approach and it gives very mediocre results, because you are trying to use action to compensate for a mis-alignment within. If you work towards letting go of all the negative thought patterns you hold about yourself, by bringing the intelligence of “awareness” to it, you will be able to release a lot of inner resistance and then right action will flow through you with ease and you will be able to manifest your desired realities in a struggle-free manner.
A lot of people plunge into action before they set their mind right. It’s like putting the cart before the horse. In most cases, when you do this, not only will the action create struggle and strain for you, but also create situations that intensify the mis-alignment that you feel within. Action arising from a conflict free mind has a completely different energy to it, than action arising from a mind riddled with negativity. It takes time and a committed awareness to let go of the momentum of past negativity and develop an attitude of love, fearlessness and alignment with who you are. If you put in the time to align with yourself first, then you will have the right foundation, and huge leverage, to take the right action which will move you towards the manifestation of your desired realities.
Set your mind free of fears first, and then the right actions will follow automatically. Don’t try to use work as a means to avoid dealing with the inner negativity that you feel about yourself and your life. It’s much easier to simply drown yourself in work, just like an alcoholic drowns himself in his addiction, rather than take the time to bring awareness to the deep held patterns of negative beliefs/thoughts in the mind and thus let go of them. We would rather distract ourselves through work or entertainment, than face the fears and the negativity in the mind. Using hard work to achieve results is a very mediocre approach when your mind is conflicted within, but once your mind is free of identification with negativity you will be able to get inspired towards the right action which will not only feel joyful and enriching, but will also take you swiftly towards the desired realities you want to experience.
Alignment within yourself is the leverage to manifest desires
Your desires/dreams for the realities you wish to experience, will remain stuck in the realm of hope and wishful thinking if your mind has negative thoughts about you. Look within and see if there are thought patterns in your mind that tell you that you are un-deserving, unworthy or unsuitable, for the realities you desire to manifest. For example, you may desire to have a successful business but a part of your mind might hold thoughts of self-deprecation like – “I am not as smart as others”, “I won’t be able to handle success”, “I always mess up”, and other thoughts that make you feel unworthy of the success you desire. When you are holding these thoughts in your mind, it doesn’t matter how much hard work you put in your result will stay mediocre at best.
When you align with yourself, by developing a sense of respect, love and appreciation for who you are, you automatically become a match to your desired reality and this leverage will pour in a new energy into your actions which will create successful results with no struggle. Success is not about achieving results but it’s about a feeling of “happiness” within which can only be achieved when you are aligned with yourself. No matter what results you achieve, if you don’t feel good about yourself, it will always feel like you are missing something. Awareness is the key to freedom from negative thinking, and all these pointers are just sign-posts that help you look within and see through the patterns of negativity in you and thus release resistance to the life force.
Sen, these posts are so timely, it’s incredible how you are asking the questions that are occurring to me – in the same sequence for the past few days too.
How long do you think the process of changing an external reality can take? It seems that it not only takes time to have an honest dialogue internally, but then as one becomes more aligned with joy, the change in the external is gradual as well?
The process of manifestation starts when a desire gets generated in your being. The energy of the desire becomes present “non-physically” in the energy field of your life stream and it attracts onto itself all the resources needed for its “physical” manifestation. “You” are one the resources needed for the desire to manifest itself physically, because in your absence the desire cannot possibly manifest, so this force of attraction created by your desire starts pulling the energy of your “human consciousness” towards it. Now it depends upon how much “resistance” is present in your human consciousness to determine how much time it takes for your external reality to reflect the manifestation of your desired reality. In fact a part of the process of manifestations is the “burning away” of your resistance. Life seems to orchestrate events in such a way that you are brought towards understanding/clarity or insights which help you let go of the resistance – even if you don’t realize the importance of an event at that time. It’s all part of the process of the physical manifestation unfolding. You will see that certain events and insights cause a lot of your inner doubts, fears and negativity to come to the surface to the light of your awareness. When these patterns of resistance are brought to the light of awareness, again and again, they start losing their grip on your consciousness, until they ebb away fully. As the resistances keep ebbing away, the force of attraction of your desire is able to pull you more and more easily towards the manifestation.
It’s not possible to know how long a desire will take to manifest, because it’s completely dependent on how much resistance is present in your human consciousness towards the manifestation. It’s an irony that we hinder our own well-being by holding on to negative/limiting beliefs that cause resistance to the movement of life force towards the manifestation of our desired reality, but it can’t be helped because these resistance are present in us due to past external conditioning, old memories (ingrained the brain), limiting perceptions/belief and unquestioned fears. Only through the light of contemplation, introspection, understanding and awareness can these patterns be dis-identified with and thus dissolved. When there is no resistance in you towards the manifestation of a desire, it usually manifests in very short time. You will notice that small desires that you don’t have resistance to manifest in quick time while the important desire (the big ones) seem to take a lot more time because we consider them a “big deal” which in itself is a limiting thought of resistance. As long as a desire is a “big deal” in your mind, it will always stand in fear of it or in doubt. All these resistances are burnt away as you allow this process to unfold in you by becoming more “relaxed”, more conscious and receptive to clarity.
This is a great article and I believe everything that you say is truth- BUT – The nitty gritty of this issue is, How do you change the way you feel about yourself? Most of us realise our self defeating thinking and habits, but changing that record player in our heads is not an easy feat. The mind does like like to be forced and it takes time to change old established thinking patterns and beliefs. I have come to realise that everything we experience comes down to our beliefs about the world, our society and essentially ourselves, but I have yet to figure out how to change the old tired beliefs that are responsible for the life experiences that we attract.
A pattern in the mind gets its fuel from your “attention” to it. The more attention you give to a thought the stronger it becomes in momentum and force, the stronger a thought becomes the more capacity it has to influence your vibration and hence influence what you attract. When you consciously detach your attention from a thought by staying as a space of awareness, allowing the thought’s momentum to fizzle away, you will notice a steady reduction in the intensity of the thought pattern until it ebbs away in force completely.
When you focus on trying to “change” a thought pattern using mind techniques, you are basically only fueling the thought you are trying to change – because to change a thought you need to focus on it. However, when you stay as a space of awareness (or detached awareness), you can allow the thought to ebb away in intensity on its own instead of trying to change it. It’s like removing the foot from the accelerator and allowing a car to come to a halt on its own. As you’ve rightly mentioned it’s not possible to force the mind to stop, you cannot applied brakes forcibly – so the only way to allow its momentum to ebb away by staying as a space of passive awarenesss (or what I call relaxed awareness). When a negative thought pattern dissolves in intensity, your resistance to your life stream becomes less and this allow more well-being to flow in. I’ve talked about this state of being in many of the posts in this blog.
I would like to understand…I was diagnosed with OCD cause of the repetitive nature of my thoughts….I get greatly influenced by things i read or see and then i start fearing them and those thoughts get repetitive in my head …i understand that i need to actually stop resisting these thoughts and let it flow…and recognise them to be only thoughts and not an indication of anything…Most of the times i succeed but then i fail many times…How do i achieve this state whereby i can always ignore and let go unwanted thoughts and things..Cause my heart knows the truth but my brain sometimes hammers in the unecessary…
madhuri, the root cause of the problem is not that the mind has a tendency to be repetitive in its thinking mode, but the fact that you are in “fear” of it. The mind is just a neural network, and it’s being given way too much importance, and power, than it deserves. It’s not just about “letting go” of the thoughts, but the attitude behind it. If you are trying to “let go” from a place of fear, from a place of trying to escape or run away from these thoughts, then you are indirectly fueling them and hence you continue feeling like a prisoner to the mind. You have to bring an awareness to the mind to the point where you stop fearing it, when you stop fearing the mind, you can let go of identification with any thought that does not serve you. But first you need to reach a place where you are not in fear of the mind movement.
How can i do that. Now that i have explained my state of mind to you could you explain to me practically as to how i could do that . I understand your point and i agree with you. So from where i am standing what do u think i should do first. Like what should be my first step. I understand the problem. So how do i reach a place where i am not in fear of my mind movement?
mardhuri, to stop fearing the mind is not a technique, because all techniques obviously come from a place of fear where you are trying to either get rid of the mind or ignore the mind. When I say don’t fear the mind, it’s simply a pointer for you to recognize and realize that the way to freedom is not to try and get rid of the mind but to stop fearing it and thus allow it its movement. There is fear when there is lack of awareness, to more stable you are in your awareness the less tendency you will have to be pushed around by the intensity of the mind. But the only way to increase you awareness is to first stop living in fear of the mind – it’s not a question how, it’s simply a question of changing the attitude. It’s like when you fear the dark as a child, and the only way to remove the fear is to stay in the dark for a while until you no longer fear it.
Thank you Sen, I learn a lot from this post. Now I have understood that success is not about achieving results, but it is about the feeling of happiness from within which is only be achieved when you are aware of negative thought in your mind and do not let yourself be identified with it. Awareness brings light to my mind, I have awakened the true person inside me. I have let go of a number of negative thoughts. I have experience levels of freedom as well. To me freedom means free of fear and free of negative thoughts affections. I used to dissatisfy with myself, and for sure this has created many struggles to my life whether or not I achieve somethings. Now, I have realized the importance of the answer “Yes”. It’s all about alignment with yourself, the feeling of happiness from within and action will automatically manifest itself with effort-free. I love that kind of life and that kind of feeling. It’s Great. I have been living my life as the way it is. No demanding, no seeking, just the way it is and enjoy it. Life is full of happiness whether your current situation is. Just enjoy it and experience it. Your life should never be the same!
I seem to have trouble being comfortable around other people.
I get that we are all one. we are the same being. i understand the message you’re giving. i am experiencing the release phase.. its all going well on most levels but i am still and have always sort of had trouble making friends… except when i was thrown in with the ” cool kids” in high school, simply cuz we played the same sports and lived by each other. But i have always been socially pathetic.. i cant seem to identify the right thoughts or emotions to allow this awkwardness to leave my presence.. can you help Sen?
Bill – I can offer my experience thus far in this release in regards to the “socially awkward” stuff. Pretty much my whole life I relied on humor as a crutch to be accepted, because my conversational skills were/are subpar. 2 of my friends have gone away since allowing and I am fine with that, even though I am down to one friend. The whole point is to allow everything, there is no need to forcefully search your mind for a particular thought to focus on getting rid of. If you can recall back to the days of complete unconscious identification with the mind, you’ll remember the mind scrambling to find a solution to a problem.
The mind is the one that made the problem (i.e. the thought of “I’m socially retarded” or something like that) so you can’t expect the mind to figure out the solution. Sen has used good analogies describing that like “A cop wants to kill a terrorist, even though the cop is the terrorist, so how can he kill the terrorist?” (paraphrasing).
It took me until a few weeks ago to fully internalize what the “openness” portion of this process is all about. Before I just had a conceptualization/understanding, but it takes quite a while to really internalize it. Reading all of these articles can help you get an understanding, which is needed to know what you’re doing with this process, as “walking in a cave without a torch isn’t going to end well” (kind of a goofy metaphor), but the full definition of openness is fully internalized after a decent amount of time spent engaged in the process.
Me explaining what I have internalized may seem contradictory to what I have just written above, because reading definitions doesn’t give you the full benefit, but it may help drive the point home. Real openness is not shying away from feelings of feeling good, feeling bad, feeling lost, hopeless, depressed, anxious, confused, suicidal, jealous, and anything else that comes up.
Other people on this site have said that certain persistent thoughts have gone away in 2 months or less, or possibly longer, but it’s a completely subjective experience. I’ve had nagging thoughts about my ex girlfriend for the entire time I’ve been doing this process (3 or so months). Sometimes they’re mild and sometimes they are absolutely insane, to the point where my body is heavy and all I can think about doing is savagely beating the crap out of her (and no, I’m not psychotic).
A thought like the “psychotic” one above could get a lot of people to judge themselves like “Why am I thinking about this? I’m a good person, I’d never do that” and so on and so forth. The mind is going to spew up whatever it wants, just don’t get identified with them. I don’t associate myself as a “woman beater” because of these thoughts, I allow them their full space.
In final regards to your inquiry of lack of social skills – last night was a very intense release period for me. I was a complete sack with no energy, wanted to die, felt inferior, and many other low emotions. I allowed all of them their space and eventually they calmed down. I went to the gas station at around 1 am to get candy and 2 “thugs” as I would call them came inside. Normally I would be scared, but my mind had exhausted so much energy earlier during the intensity of the release, that it didn’t have energy to care. The two guys did talk to me very briefly and I had next to no energy, so my replies weren’t that great, but the bottom line was that I didn’t give a damn.
I didn’t give a damn if they talked to me, yelled at me, called me names, or whatever. My brain had no energy for resistance at that point. So your social problems aren’t really the real issue, it’s the resistance behind them of “What if I mess up?” “What if this person doesn’t like me?”, etc. The ego feeds off of acceptance and popularity, even though it will never be full (like the typical American *zing!). A 100% openness to these thoughts of social interactions will eventually bring them down in intensity.
Hi Bill,
Key is to stay allowing, and not judging your thoughts and feelings, this is how they will balanced out. May be you are just introvert in nature, or may be you are totally into socializing, whatever your true nature is, the only way to find it out is to allow all this feelings now, feeling uncomfortable among people, consciously, to surface your being, while not buying into ~mind ideas~ about ~how you should be~and its judging pattern.