“Thoughts are Things.” This is a central tenet of many so-called “New Age” religions. In fact, if you’ve seen “The Secret” you’ll hear that in reality thoughts are everything.
What does this mean? In a nutshell, it means that we create our own reality. Remember that axiom I introduced you to earlier: “I am Responsible”? Well, this is another way of taking that axiom to yet another absurd conclusion that can change your life in a quantum manner.
I found that when I (even temporarily pretend to) accept this tenet and pay attention, I see a lot to prove it: I’ve watched circumstances, events, and people entering my life that reinforce my beliefs – even (and in my case, perhaps especially) the “negative” ones.
The key to seeing how this works has been getting honest about my beliefs. I may give lip service to being an intelligent, successful, highly capable person, but if I baffle myself by making self-destructive decisions that detract substantially from the quality of my life, I find I need to dig a little deeper. And when I do, I invariably find that lurking in the shadows are beliefs like “I don’t deserve to be happy when so many are suffering”; “I should be ashamed for having so much when others are in need”; and if I dig really deep I might even uncover the unlovely “I’m just no damn good.”
These thoughts seem hard-coded, at least at first. And in fact, they may well be hard-coded, deeply rooted in the subconscious. But if I pay attention to them, and honestly watch how they play out in my self-destructive decisions, I end up understanding a powerful Truth: What I believe most deeply governs my behavior, and in the process creates the circumstances around me.
In my case, I inherited (or more likely rehearsed into existence as a child) some contradictory beliefs that explain the complexity of my circumstances. On one hand, I had my mom telling me “You can be anything you want” and “You’re so smart!” On the other hand, both she and my dad helped me rehearse messages like “You’re so lazy” and “Why do you have to be so stupid?” It made for a confusing pool of core beliefs, and resulted in a terribly neurotic but reasonably successful adult.
A dear friend and spiritual guide once nailed it on the head. He said: “You use Shame like a drug!” And he was right – I resorted to Shame every time I had a success to “keep myself in line”; I lingered in it an luxuriated in it endlessly; I rehearsed it and rehearsed it until I didn’t realize I was doing it to myself. I thought it was just “the way I am” – that I didn’t really choose to be ashamed, it just happened outside my control, like the weather. It was just a coincidence that the weather was always stormy.
Under his guidance, I began to observe my thoughts, and after awhile noticed that there was a short distance between “Point A” and “Point B” (Point A being “not ashamed” and Point B being “ashamed”). In that short distance, I began a downward spiral of thinking that took me to Point B. If I interrupted that spiral (something that took a lot of practice) I could avoid Point B altogether! And something amazing began to happen – I stopped using Shame like a drug! (Or perhaps more accurately, I couldn’t use Shame anymore without knowing I was doing it to myself.)
Awareness is a remarkable thing – once you are Aware, it is impossible to be completely Unaware ever again. This can be both a curse and a blessing – while it provides a foundation for revolutionary change, revolutionary change is itself unnerving and painful.
So I had to weigh for myself the discomfort of self-imposed misery against the challenge and discomfort of revolutionary change. And gratefully that old, old message “You can be anything you want to be” won out, and I began to choose revolutionary change.
The next post will talk about one of the most powerful agents of revolutionary change that I have ever experienced, a fascinating technology called Holosync®.
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