Most of the time, it’s the external world that is blamed for the condition we are currently in. Whether be relatives, friends, colleagues or acquaintances, we often are able to escape by blaming them for the life we are living. If they are really responsible, then who made the choice to follow them? If we are not the one, then where is that decision maker? Where does he live or resides? I won’t give answers to these questions, we all know the answers. The point is not to embarrass oneself but embrace the fact that the real FIGHT is not OUTSIDE, its INSIDE…. yessss its inside us.
How many times it has happened to us that we have pulled away from taking a step in life, just because we didn’t have enough guts or self-belief to move on. How many times it has happened that we have got so habited with our problems that when happiness is around we still live in fear of losing it. Don’t we all have a common complaint / regret that “I WISH I HAD DONE …………. “. Are these questions pointing out to something known yet unaccepted by us?
That is “WE BECOME THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE OF OUR LIFE”.
It is not dangerous to know this fact, rather it is the first step, called “Awareness” to attend it in a better way. It is dangerous if we do not do anything to release ourselves from it. I would say that we can travel a significant distance on the path of enlightenment if we truly ACCEPT and are AWARE that the problem is inside us and we have to change our conventional way of thinking that we have acquired over the years from the limited version of the realities that we have experienced through our senses. For example if you blind-fold two people who have never seen an elephant and then leave one towards the head and other towards the tail and ask them to describe this creature on basis of what they perceive of their touch, then one might say that its someone with a solid fleshy and flexible body, while the other on the tail might perceive it as a reptile or snake. But in either case reality is different that it’s a mighty animal, though both have their own versions of perceived reality, as how they have experienced. Similarly, we experience this world with our own senses. It is like we all have our own viewfinder to see the world. Hence we can only begin our journey to enlightenment if we are open to the fact that there is a lot to be known and lot to be amazed at. This is what keeps us alive – to stand between the known and the unknown.
So now since we have realised that we need to change our perception and should be open to new ideas, then the next big question comes …. HOW to do it ? . My objective to write this article is not to introduce you to any deeper realities, but to propose a very practical and possible solution to keeping ourselves away from being our own slaves.
The information and sources are flooding around us to read and understand spirituality and positive thinking, but then why do we tend to go back to our old habits of thinking? Read the question again, you will find the answer in itself…. Haven’t guessed it…. its “HABITS”. Anything or any thought remain with us and comes back to us when we have unknowingly developed a habit of experiencing it. I am trying to explain a concept by using a Symbol “Habit” because it becomes easier to understand if we can relate it to something known. In this case “A HABIT”.
What is a Habit? It’s a repeated pattern of a behaviour/thought/action. Most of the times the habits are not formed consciously, but rather subconscious mind influences the conscious to make us feel the need to repeat a thought that we act upon. Through this explanation my point is that thinking negative and feeling low on self-esteem and dragging back to old patterns of thoughts are all the forms of habits that we have developed over the time.
The next question that should ponder us is “Can habits be Undone?”. If our household water tank gets filled with dirty water, what will we do? Perhaps we will replace the dirty water with the cleaner water. Is that so? Similarly, if our mind gets used to unhealthy habits, we have to replace it with healthier habits. But the big question is – We got into bad / negative or self-restricting habits because we don’t have control on our mind and thoughts. As scientists say that we have around 60,000 thoughts per day, then how can we manage them? Any one will go crazy to manage each thought. Thoughts need not to be managed, they are mend to flow. What is needed to manage is our connection with these thoughts, which is reflected in our feelings inside us. i.e we feel good or bad.
Hence to sum up till now, we have discussed that we often live a fearful and self-restricted life because we have developed the habit of being in that state of mind, so even though we study positivity, we still tend to go back to our old patterns of thinking. To undo this, we have to replace our habits with cleaner and positive habits and that can be done by managing our connection with the thoughts and feelings. Out of all this, again a thought comes……. don’t stop it! it is mend to be flown… the thought is “HOW TO MANAGE THOUGHTS?”. I again repeat that we don’t need to manage thoughts, we need to manage our CONNECTION with the thought. No normal person can have positive thoughts 24X7. It’s OK to have some negative thoughts, but important is to make yourself realize that very moment that I DON’T CONNECT to this THOUGHT…. Affirm it that very moment to yourself that you don’t connect to it. Stopping a thought will only increase the turbulence in your mind. So let the thought come, pause a second and then affirm with full faith that it’s just a thought you don’t connect or associate to. You don’t need to analyse or think about it again or investigate as to why it came to you. Remember that thoughts and opinions are like clouds that come and go.
To make these processes better and faster there is a three-way action required that works on both conscious and subconscious level. I am writing this though my own experience and need for this. This three-way process is –
- KNOWLEDGE
- MEDITATION
- AFFIRMAT- ION / VISUALISATION
KNOWLEDGE doesn’t only denote the texts mentioned in the books or those found in various workshops, but it pertains to free you and open you to new ideas in life. Keep reading the ideas and thoughts of enlighten souls and spiritual thinkers who talk about unity consciousness. Remember the biggest our all knowledge is “Self-knowledge”. So discover yourself.
MEDITATION is the best way to become an observer of oneself. It leads us to a path where we can see our thoughts and easily disconnect ourselves with the ones those are undesired. It helps us to see our life as we are watching a movie. It is not important to be positive everytime, as too much positivity may also cause turbulence in our mind. It is important to reach a state of bliss. Hence the most important thing is to detach oneself from the unwanted thoughts and let them flow and go away with ease. We don’t need to sit for hours for meditation even a sitting of 10 mins a day is enough to bring a shift. Best exercise is – Sit in a quiet place and close your eyes. Just be aware of your breathing- as the air goes in and out. I haven’t used the term “focus on your breathing”, because mediation is about relaxing your mind and not putting it to work. So just be aware of your breathing. Your mind will start wandering and thoughts will come. Gently bring back your awareness to your breathing and continue for so long as you like……
AFFIRMATION is an important tool to incept and idea to your subconscious mind. An affirmation is the repetition of a thought consciously that eventually percolates to subconscious mind. For example you have a Stage fear then you should affirm yourself – “I love my audience, They have travelled all the way to hear me, I love my audience”. Affirm this with faith before every appearance and before sleeping at night. Any affirmation should be made in a positive way, like in above example affirming “I am not afraid of stage” will not yield significant results, so always affirm “WHAT YOU WANT” never affirm in terms of “WHAT YOU DON’T WANT”. Also those who have a good imagination power can VISUALIZE themselves in that winning way… The difference between dreaming and visualising is that in the later you believe that you already have attained it, while dreams lack in faith and hence things appear out of reach. So if you want to become an actor then live life as you already are an actor. Then see how the universe will arrange people and circumstances for you.
We often ignore such arrangements by naming them coincidences but indeed they are the meaningful coincidences known as Synchronicity.
Sending Love, Laughter and Joy…… Parth Sharma