An external conditioning present in the mind, is taken to be “true” by the mind and its belief in this conditioning causes it to attract experiences that give evidence/reflection of it. For example, if your mind believes in the conditioning that “life is a struggle”, then the external reality you attract will constantly give you evidence of this belief in you. Basically all the beliefs you’ve garnered from the outside influences, and your limited interpretation/perception of life, becomes part of the conditioning in your mind – what I would define as “external conditioning”, because this is not the conditioning you were born with, but what you acquired through your movement in life. Positive external conditioning is highly beneficial to your well-being, whereas negative external conditioning can become a source of toxicity in your reality.
To overcome a negative conditioning in the mind, you must first understand the dynamics of how a mind functions and what it entails to dis-associate with an external conditioning you’ve been following unconsciously for so long in your life.
Allowing the fear that arises during dissolution of negative conditioning
No matter how strongly you understand a positive perspective, it’s not possible to let go of a negative perspective (that you’ve been holding for several years) within a day or two. This is because, the mind/brain has strong neural pathways created to subconsciously run the ingrained beliefs on “auto mode”, this allows it to have free resources to tackle other day to day issues, so that you don’t have to constantly keep reminding yourself of your beliefs. These strong neural pathways have been built over years of attuning to a certain perspective or way of thinking, which created the belief.
When you have a negative belief in your mind, and you identify its dysfunction, you are in a position to let go of it. But the pace at which you let go of a negative belief completely depends on how willing you are to “disassociate” with it. If you are in a position of “compromise” where you go along with the negative perspective now and then, it will just take you more time to dissolve it. If you become totally rooted/committed to letting go of a negative conditioning, you will no longer take any action under the pull of this conditioning – even if it means going through a phase of stark insecurity/fear when the mind feels that you are going to be in trouble if you stop following a belief/conditioning that has been going on in it for years. If you give in to the fears of the mind, you just “compromise” and thus fuel the negative conditioning longer. (Di-association with a negative conditioning can be a challenging phase but it reaps rich results when you stick to your alignment)
An unconscious mind always wants to the cling to the “familiar”, even if the familiar is a negative one, a conscious mind is willing to allow the phase of fear for a while, without giving into a negative conditioning, so that this conditioning can get dissolved and a new reality can be attracted as a result. You can read the post “Don’t Fear Fear” to get a perspective of why fear is not always a bad thing, because fear is also the energy you feel even when an old reality (a dysfunctional one) is being dissolved for you and if you misinterpret this “fear”, you might try to cling to the old reality again – I call this “transformational fear”. Allowing this fear, to be present in your being without getting anxious about it sets you up to be a co-operative component to letting a new reality take shape.
Staying aligned with your natural conditioning
The natural conditioning in you comes from two places
– the nature of your being to align with joy/love (as its natural vibration)
– the natural make-up of your human mind (with its dark/light natures)
The combination of both the natures (the mind and the being) is what constitutes the natural conditioning of a human being. The toughest part for most people is to align with the natural make-up of their human mind, in all its aspects, and no matter how many times it’s pointed out the mind has its dark natures and lights natures, most people are always trying to force their mind into a “boxed idea” of goodness alone.
The mind is the mind, the mind is not the “being” and it’s not meant to be divine/perfect, it’s a programmed machine and it has certain inherent “wiring” in it that makes it impossible for it to change certain ingrained natures in it – I would call it the “unchangeable natures” in your mind. The imperfections of the mind is what allows for the diverse experience of physical life, this is what allows for the “spice” of physical life – stop trying to force your mind into some skewed idea you have of perfection – there is a difference between acquiring “maturity about life” and acquiring “perfection” as far as the mind is concerned. Understand/align with the unchangeable natures in your mind, and stop opposing its natural proclivity.
(In all these pointers, where I use the term “you”, I am just referring to you as the mind/brain, and also you as the awareness, in combination because in your waking hours both these intelligences are operating simultaneously)
Any belief that makes you go against this natural conditioning present in you as a human+being (not a typo), puts you in resistance with the inflow of well-being, ease and abundance into your reality. If you just make it your priority to always be committed to what feels like joy in your being, you will never be taken in by any negative conditioning no matter how strong the pull may be. If you stand true to this commitment, with time the negative conditionings will lose their roots in your mind and will fizzle away in influence, allowing the attraction of realities congruent with your nature – this allows for the unfolding of your natural expression.
Can you give few more examples of negative outside influences. What I’m wondering is can there be several or one main one that is really the root of this negative conditioning? Ive not been a rebellious kid from my youth on but I look back and see a lot of unconscious behaviors from early on. What’s your take? Because “life is a struggle” is so general but maybe that the better way of facing the fear(s)?
Some common negative conditioning that happen in an unconscious mind (under the influence of outside, and from misguided self-interpretation) are as below
– People are always against me or trying to exploit me
– I am not a good enough
– I have to compete with others to get ahead
– I cannot be happy until I achieve xyz
– I am inferior to others because I lack xyz
– No pain no gain
– I need to do things that I don’t like because life is not easy
– My desires are not important to life
– God will punish me for my desires
– I am a bad/useless person because I did xyz (or didn’t do xyz)
– No-one will ever want to be with me (I can’t have a happy relationship)
– It’s tough to make money
– I have to sacrifice my joy to make a livelihood
– I can’t have a healthy/fit body
– People are always judging me negatively
– I am not intelligent enough so I can’t have my desired reality
– I am not good looking enough so I can’t have my desired reality
– I am dependent on xyz (I can’t live without xyz)
These are still quite general, the mind can get really specific about certain negative conditioning – for example, there are men who think that unless they have a buff body they won’t be able attract a girl, and this conditioning keeps them in resistance to their desire for a relationship. There are women who are conditioned to think that men only care about sex in a relationship, and hence they label men as perverts/jerks, and this conditioning causes them to keep attracting this behavior in the men they interact with.
Thanks, very helpful in gaining a better perspective.
Hi Sen
I wondered if you could talk a little about ‘stress’ and ‘being too busy’ or ‘trying to do too much in less and less time’ and how that has kind of become valued today. Even rudeness due to stress and having ‘no time’ is accepted. Why do we get on the stress wheel of a never ending climb to somewhere in the future and never seem to arrive? Can we become addicted to stress and how does that happen? Is it our mind patterns? Is it anxiety? Is it genes? Is the addiction driving us and if so how?
Is being so busy all the time the cause of it? Most people I know think that they can get off this fast wheel at anytime once they get what they are after but I’m not so sure. We all seem to have ‘no time’ and are exhausted, angry, impatient and have little time for friends, family or even fun. We feel guilty when we do stop and can’t seem to ‘let go’ and enjoy ourselves when we are on holiday’s or taking time out, there always seems like we ‘should’ be doing something. I seem to be getting older and we’re all still going fast and going ‘after something’ or judging ourselves for not getting ‘there’ yet and feeling low self worth. When does the race stop? Even in stillness we are stressing out, planning ahead, looking fo the next thing to do, to save time or to get ahead.
Is working hard at all a bad thing, if you are striving to get somewhere i.e. a goal, a career, success of some kind. I know that this is seeking the self in forms, and this can never fulfil us. So do we seek at all? Or is it all insane?
Thanks Sen
RBM
Activity can arise from a place of inner joy/alignment or it can arise from a place of fear. Activities comes from a place of fear create products that reflect that same lower vibration that they were produced in. The mindset of trying to reach happiness through struggle-oriented work is flawed in its very premise, because it’s scientifically not possible to manifest a joyful reality from doing work/actions rooted in struggle/fear/lack. Activities, work, actions can be enjoyed and become an expression of joy when it comes from a place of alignment, there are people who are busy 17 hours a day but they don’t feel fatigued in their being because they are working in an “effortless flow” because their actions are congruent with their natural make-up and they are internally aligned with themselves. Of course, in the absence of “awareness” it’s not possible to reach a steady place of inner alignment, because lack of awareness can cause use to be become lost in the mind and in our actions and thus start moving into imbalance. So being “conscious” and being rooted in inner alignment consciously, is the pre-requisite for being aligned with effortless/joy-based activity that allow the expression of our full potential for creativity as this human form.
In the absence of a conscious alignment, it’s easy to be lost in “seeking” of the mind. To want to experience new realities and manifest certain goals/intentions is the natural drive of the mind and it’s totally fine, in fact that’s the juice of physicality. The problem is when we become lost in this movement while losing touch with our inner wholeness, this causes greed, jealousy, over-indulgence and craving to surface. The foundation is to become conscious first, and allow a conscious alignment with our life-stream, and then from this place of wholeness we are automatically inspired towards the right actions and our natural creativity/potential flowers through, I call it “effortless existence” not because there are no activities here, but because the activities feels effortless and in the flow.
My latest post addresses the dysfunction of being in a rat race
How is it that with metal.. opposites attract.. we can see this. But through the law of attraction its the complete opposites where like attracts like. One could make the arguement that its simply a beleif in your mind and you’re accomplishing these things through hard work or focus on doing it through repetitivness of whatever it is and has nothing to do with a larger picture of life energy or anything.
Bill, there are two things that are true about everything in nature/life
1. In a state of imbalance, there is an “experience” of imbalance
2. All states of imbalance naturally have a pull towards balance
The above two statements are not beliefs, they are just observations of reality, they can be proven scientifically – for example, in a “stable atom” is the one which has an equal balance of protons (positive/light charge) and electrons (negative/dark charge), an “unstable atom” is the one which has either an imbalance of electrons (more electrons than protons) or imbalance of protons – and an “unstable atom” behaves unstably, it’s said to be in an “excited state” until it finds balance by equalizing the number of protons and electrons in it. I am not sure what you mean by “with metal… opposites attract”, I am guessing you meant “with magnets.. opposite poles attract), and “magnets” are not just stable metals, they are “polarized metals” (where the atoms are in a state of imbalance) and hence are attracted to the opposite in a bid to balance – so they are following the second truth, which is that anything that’s imbalanced has a pull towards finding balance. These are again not beliefs, but observations, just like “gravity” is not a belief, but a reality observation. Another example is, when you take a bowl of water, and shake it, creating ripples (imbalance) and notice that the water naturally finds its way back to balance of being settled down.
The above two truths hold for thinking and unthinking elements (like minerals, water) of life. However, with “thinking elements” (creatures with brains, like humans or other animals) there is an added equation of the ability to “create” – thought is the basis of creation and any creature with the ability to think has this ability of creating personal experiences. The aspect of “like attracts like” is an added reality for the “thinking creatures”, for example, if a man keeps holding on to thoughts of imbalanced hatred, he has a constant experience of imbalanced hatred (in the form of resentment and bitterness) and he naturally feels an inner pull towards letting go of this imbalance (the drive for inner peace), and these are the first two truths about life/reality, however this man, being a thinking creature, also has the ability to resist this pull towards balance, and hold onto to the imbalanced hatred, as a matter of personal will. When he holds on to hatred, he attracts experiences rooted in hatred, because of the creative ability (the potential to create) of thought/feeling – for example, he can express hatred and he can influence other thinking minds, which can then express hatred back or in a state of hatred he can end up creating a reality like having an accident where he damages his car which amplifies his irritation/hatred (like attracts like), thus his predominant inner experience keeps creating/attracting similar experiences, which keep amplifying the inner experience. So this aspect of “like attracts like” is just added equation for “thinking beings”, since thought has the ability to create. The “thinking beings” can hold on to imbalance and resist the pull towards balance, in so holding on they can create a large momentum of imbalance within which ultimately hits a form of threshold creating a breakdown, as the final straw breaks the camel’s back, causing a state of “giving up” and thus fall into the natural pull towards balance, unlike the “unthinking components” (like metals or water or air) which naturally follow the pull towards finding balance everytime imbalance sets in.
Having said all this, I would reiterate that it’s not understanding (or need for certainty in understanding/knowing) that truly gives you inner freedom, it’s your openness to uncertainty which does. My sense of freedom is not dependent on my understanding, rather it arises from my openness to anything that happens, or that has to happen.