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Month: February 2010
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Soul Traveler
The Road to Anywhere/Nowhere
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.
Curiosities
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Life Loves Rain
Celebrate the Weather Every Day
Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet. – Roger Miller
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Forget Positive Affirmations
Positive Affirmations Are Negative in Nature
What do we do with the fact that almost 100% of positive affirmations are negative in nature? You disagree with the numbers?
Most affirmations I see being mouthed are being initiated from a place of deficiency, a wanting to change our state or circumstances to some idea of better. A large part of the effort exerted in positive affirming seems to be an attempt to convince ourselves that we (or life) are more than we believe ourselves to be in the moment – I’m successful. I’m lovable, the world is abundant, God is on my side, etc.The whole motivation is coming from an unacknowledged and under-explored sense of lack and deficiency. More than that, it is a complete rejection of reality as it is in the moment – the reality that we believe we (life) are lacking.
As I write this, I am sitting in my office. I don’t know of anyone who could come over here and move this building 6 inches with their physical strength much less with a positive affirmation. And yet, there are many people trying to push the entire universe around, to warp and shape it to meet their ideas of what they think they need to be whole or complete or happy.
Why are positive affirmations so appealing? Mostly because they help us avoid pain and suffering – or so we think. Much of the effect of positive affirmations is nothing more than hiding from what we really believe deep down inside, in the dark places we wish to ignore.
It’s a sad, tragic and, at times, a comic affair.Imagine a lion walking around affirming – I’m king of the jungle, I’m king of the jungle. And yet this is exactly what people are doing with positive affirmations most of the time. The lion’s very nature is that it is a lion. Being king of the jungle is mostly an idea .
Fortunately lions are not as confused as human beings. Lions mostly walk around being lions without suffering from being disconnected from themselves and having a bunch of ideas about who or what they should be.
The most affirming experience we humans can have is to land in our true nature. A moment of perceiving the real is more powerful than a lifetime of words. Well intentioned, but misguided efforts at positive affirmations would be better spent in learning how to settle down and allow what is truly real in us arise into consciousness.
The world is abundant. Life is on our side. We are awesome and wonderful. It’s the true state of affairs. If we can’t see it, then the more productive course of action is to explore – why not. Trying to convince ourselves that the sky is blue when, in fact, the sky is blue – is crazy behavior.
As the saying goes – the only way out is through. Explore the deficiencies, the hidden beliefs. Open them up to the light of awareness. The truth will set us free. The false dissolves. Only the real remains.
Related Posts
- How Good Friends Can Keep Us Down
- Why Affirmations Don’t Work
- Why Affirmation Works
- Coming to You Soon Through Understanding
- What’s Wrong with This Life?
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Existence is In the Present
The Present Moment Contains Insight & Wisdom
I was reading an editorial in Newsweek that contain this quote from Marcus Aurelius:
If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything – as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.Very few of us really seem to understand the present moment. This is because most of the time we view and experience it from a linear perspective in time. The experience then becomes reified and the whole lot is reduced to the realm of dualistic thinking.
If we really see and experience the present in the NOW, we will experience it from the non-dual perspective which is beyond linear thinking and time. It is this timeless experience that Marcus’ words point to.
The article goes on to list what Marcus sees as characteristics of the rational soul:
- Affection for its neighbors
- Truthfulness
- Humility
The author, Jon Meacham, explains Marcus’ perspective:
Human beings, he writes, “were made to help others.” Nothing is good “except what leads to fairness, and self-control, and courage, and free will. And nothing bad except what does the opposite.”
A perspective still worthy of serious contemplation.
Items of Philosophical Interest
Related Posts
- The Unfolding Now
- Lighting Up the NOW
- Eckhart Tolle & PBS
- Coming to You Soon Through Understanding
- How Easy Is It to Be in the NOW?
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How Good Friends Can Keep Us Down
Well Intentioned Friends Can Support Our Deficiencies
Freedom is near and dear to the human soul. Most people I know value the freedom to chase their dreams.
Recently, I have been observing a friend who is working overtime chasing her dream of success. Success, for her, has many components – financial, recognition, security, acceptance, material, etc. I think she is a good representation of a normal person with ambition and drive wanting to improve their quality of life.Her image of success has physical, emotional and psychological components. She is listening to many audio books on success to help her stay focused and motivated. Many of the messages in these self-help materials are in the nature of: you can do it; you can create the life you want; create the life you were destined to have; tell the universe what you want and it will respond; the “secret” is the power of positive thinking or visualization; or similar guidance.
What’s interesting to me is that she already has many of the things she is chasing. She just doesn’t see them or own them. She is, in fact, chasing parts of herself that are already there. There is a not so subtle rejection in this type of behavior.
Somewhere in the mix is a sense of lack. There must be. Why would we seek something we already have unless we don’t see it and feel it is lacking in us?
There seems to be this crazy misunderstanding of “positive” versus “negative” thinking. In the course of my life, I have encountered many, many people who are fanatic about positive thinking. Their positive thinking seems to prohibit them from looking at their more subtle or unconscious negative self-images or beliefs. The thinking seems to be – if I tell myself I’m wonderful, lovable or whatever a zillion times, then eventually I will be regardless of my unconscious beliefs about myself.
Well, I guess that’s one way to pass the limited time we have on this earth.
This orientation toward self-help and self-improvement is very wide spread in our culture – to the extent that it is easy for our friends to offer us support and encouragement that actually supports our unconscious beliefs instead of really supporting our movement toward freedom. It is well intentioned help that comes from a place of love and caring, but think about it – if I support your efforts to chase your tail – is that really the support you need?
I think the more loving thing to do is to try and help you stop chasing your tail and and take a close look in the mirror. Why aren’t you able to see what is so obvious to others? It’s not negative to explore negative beliefs and self-images. In fact, it’s one of the most positive things we can do to support our movement toward true freedom, wholeness and fulfillment.
Instead of avoiding or trying to cover up those limiting beliefs, we should be trying to expose them to the light of consciousness so we can see them for what they are – beliefs – ideas about ourselves that have been taken to be true. Seeing them in the clear light of the present moment sets in motion one of the most fundamental truths of realty – the truth will set us free.
Items of Interest
Related Posts
- Why Affirmations Don’t Work
- Why Affirmation Works
- Coming to You Soon Through Understanding
- What’s Wrong with This Life?
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