Ultimately “existence” boils down to thoughts. The original meaning of the word exist, which is derived from Latin, is to “step out” or stand out. The way life-energy comes into existence is through the means of a thought, or an imagination, that it holds focus on. This “focus” on the imagination, or thought of creation, is what condenses this thought into a physical creation, which seems to “stand out” in the space of non-physical life – this is what existence means. But in truth there is no real separation, because the thought (condensed as physical creation) is made of the same life-energy that thought this thought. It’s like when you put ice in water, it may look as if ice is separate from water, but essentially there is no difference, they are both the same thing, and the ice always melts back into water. The point of understanding this simple truth of existence is so you understand the power of thoughts, and the power of your focus. You are basically this same life energy and your focus has the power to condense thoughts into “existence”.

You learnt how to work with your body as a child, your learnt to use your hands and feet, and got proficient at voluntary use of your body, and this gives you a sense of control and thus a sense of stability; imagine if you had no control over what your body did. However, most of us never brought this sense of stability to our mind, mostly because we never consciously learnt to how to work with the mind. In fact, we were never taught about how to manage thoughts, and how to work with thoughts to ensure a resistance free life. But since thoughts are the fundamental blocks of creation, it’s quintessential to have an understanding of how to work with them. The deal is that you’ve already lived quite a bit of life (in many cases quite a lot of life) so there is always the past baggage of negative momentum to take care of, but it’s never too late to bring your mind back to alignment through the understanding of how to work with thoughts.

The power of a belief

Belief is basically a thought that you take to be true. The problem is that since you take it to be true, you wouldn’t even want to question it, or you would feel a sense of fear about questioning it. The power of a belief is that it directly affects the reality that you attract, this is because a belief is a thought you believe to be true and hence it gets your undivided focus, consciously or unconsciously. This is one reason a lot of beliefs are said to be “sub conscious” in that they abide in our mind as a habit of thought, mostly conditioned and unquestioned. Beliefs are so powerful that you cannot experience a personal reality that is against your inherent beliefs, this is because your mind can only look at reality through the lens of its beliefs. So if your belief is that “I am a loser”, that’s exactly the evidence that you will keep seeing everywhere – it can’t be otherwise because that’s the lens through which your brain will filter all its perceptions.

The problem with having a strong negative belief is that it inevitably attracts a reality onto itself, because your focus has the power to create, and a belief is the strongest focus you will ever give to a thought. Over the several years that you’ve existed, you’ve naturally picked up a lot of beliefs, and your present reality will be a reflection of your beliefs. Also, your beliefs constantly influence your experience of life, for example, when you have a belief that “God is judging me and will punish me”, you live a life of constant fear/guilt, and due to this low-vibrational state of being you end up attracting negativity in your reality which your mind now uses as an evidence of that belief.

The only way to change a belief is to grow in understanding. To try to change a belief through “affirmations” just doesn’t work because you can’t bluff your own mind. If you want to change a belief you need to allow for a growth in your understanding of life. Anyone who has a wholistic understanding of life, will not be holding on to limiting beliefs. For example, the understanding that who you are is not separate from life, and that life is not judging you, causes a lot of your guilt-oriented beliefs to drop away. The understanding of the principle of creation in life causes you to drop a lot of lack-based beliefs, and causes you to align with your true desires. The understanding of the “oneness” of all life forms causes you to drop prejudice based beliefs. In my own personal experience, the more I understood the mind, and the more I understood the physics of life-energy, the easier it was to let go of many limiting beliefs. This “letting go” caused these beliefs to run out of momentum on their own, because they were no longer fueled by my focus.

A lot of people who just focus on “techniques”, or practices, to be free of their negativity, may try to suppress the mind, but that’s just a temporary sense of freedom. The mind, in many cases, needs a logical understanding before it can let go of a negativity. To grow in awareness of a negativity is the first step, but the next step is to “see through” it – and to see through it is not a technique, it requires an insight/understanding. This insight becomes more easily available to you when you have a connection with your space of being, instead of being totally lost in the mind movement – that’s why the practice of relaxed awareness is of a huge benefit, because it causes you to connect with your space of being which directly means that you are more receptive to the intelligence of your life-stream, which allows the understanding needed to see through the negativity – this understanding can arise directly within you, or you attract it from an outside source.

Understanding is what liberates you

Every question, that your mind has, has an answer that can bring clarity to your specific mind, the only deal is if you really want an answer or if you are hung up on the question. A lot of people derive their whole sense of identity from their questions, so no amount of answers give them any relief because they inherently don’t want an answer – they are so strongly connected with their questions, that the idea of clearing them seems like a loss of identity. It doesn’t matter what question comes up in the mind, there is an answer available for it, and you will receive it the moment you are willing to receive it. Each mind is unique in the type of understanding that it desires, and you cannot be satisfied by someone else’s understanding unless you realize it within yourself. You can read what others have written, you can listen to others, but ultimately you need to make sure that you feel satisfied with the understanding within yourself, see if it really resonates deeply enough to break through your old perspectives.

Albert Einstein gave a very accurate pointer to this regard – “Small is the number of people who see with their (own) eyes, and think with their minds”. It just points to the fact that most people are just not willing to gain an understanding within themselves, rather they just blindly follow some techniques or practices meted out by someone they revere. A mind that’s blindly following a practice can never reach any form of liberation from its negativity, because a practice by itself solves nothing if there is no understanding of why it’s being done, and what you seek to achieve from it. This is one reason some people just sit for 20-30 years doing some practice, trying to reach enlightenment, without getting anywhere because they don’t have any understanding of what enlightenment is – they just have some vague imagination of some extra-ordinary state. Simply put, if you remove all the theatrics, enlightenment is a process of constant understanding, and learning, in the direction of personal growth, it’s that simple – it’s not a static state.

Enlightenment is not some end point to reach – your whole life is about getting enlightened about new aspects, new questions, new growth potential, that you will eternally come across, there is always something to learn, to explore, to get enlightened about. I can say I am enlightened about xyz, but I can’t say I am enlightened and done, it’s like saying “I understand everything and I am done” – it doesn’t make sense because there is always something more to learn and understand. Life is a constant growth, it’s never-ending, and if you just stay receptive, you will lead a dynamic life of constant growth, but the moment you become closed you will start stagnating – it’s not about reaching “perfection”, because there is no such thing, it’s about being open/allowing of constant growth that your life naturally instigates in you, by staying resistance-free in your being.

Relief from mind momentum

If you were conscious of the understanding that your attention fuels the negativity in the mind, you would have let go of focusing on negative thoughts and thus not have created a strong momentum of negativity in the brain. But you did not have this understanding in the past, so you unconsciously kept fueling the negativity in the brain through your focus on it, so basically your mind has gathered a momentum out of your past attention to its negativity. A mind with high momentum has the capacity to create intense feelings, and thus overwhelm you from all its dimensions, be it love, joy, fear, hatred, boredom or sexuality – a high momentum mind brings an imbalance in any/all of these dimensions. So your first job towards having a positive experience of life, is to reduce your mind momentum, in fact to bring it back to its natural state where its intensity does not impact the body.

You cannot even begin to work with thoughts when your mind has a high momentum because you will just be bogged down by its intensity. The practice of relaxed awareness is easily the fastest way to let the mind’s momentum die down – as you can see, this practice is being done for a reason, and you understand the reason before you do this practice, so you are not just doing it blindly. The reason relaxed awareness brings down the mind momentum is because when you stay in this state your focus is open, like space, and hence it’s not “contracted” on any thought, which means that the thoughts are not getting the fuel of your focused attention and thus they die down with time (the time it takes will depend on how much past momentum it has and how completely you’ve let go of identifying with it). A reduction in mind momentum is a huge relief, and a lot of spiritual teachings call this the state of “enlightenment” because of the permanent space of peace that you feel when the mind momentum is no longer there – but the way I see it, this state is just the “ground”, or pre-requisite, for living a life oriented towards resistance-free movement of constant learning and growth.

What really helps is to have an understanding, in you, that allows you to see through certain negative thoughts, instead of being pulled in by it. Some thoughts do need understanding before they can be dissolved, because when you lack an understanding you will continue to believe in those thoughts, or fuel them in some way through your fear of them. Staying as relaxed awareness actually opens you up to the possibility of such an understanding arising in you, either from within or from outside, this is because when you relax, your awareness gets in touch with the space of life in you, outside the thought space of your mind, allowing for inspirations/insights to come in to dissolve the negativity. Understanding negativity, finding connection with your space of being, and allowing the mind momentum to reduce, are the steps that are involved in coming to a place of stability in your mind, which creates the ground where you can deliberately work with thoughts (like focusing on your desires) for the purpose of creation and positive experience.