Hello readers,
One thing I have noticed about life by observing my own is that I seem to inadvertently repeat the same experiences and feel the same feelings over and over again. I know that this is not unique to me. All of us have been conditioned to repeat certain responses that worked well or not so well when we were young, and the brain and mind are deeply grooved and imprinted with these patterns.
The sensation I get is that I am highly creative and full of ideas, but that somehow I have trouble connecting with other people and with implementing my ideas. I want to manifest my ideas in the world, but issues with self-worth seem to hold me back. It is as if this invisible question in my mind causes people to say to themselves: “This person is not to be valued above what she herself says.” I feel valuable, and I want people to value my contributions and potential. Is there a subscript running below the level of my conscious awareness that is projecting this image and message of myself to others? Or, conversely, am I allowing the negativity from other people to penetrate my life because at some level I don’t feel significant enough to block it out? Yet, again and again, I feel frustrated. It is as if I must eternally replicate the frustration of my childhood – to never feel validated or valued by those in positions of power.
As we all know, our parents or those who raised us were those initial sources of authority to whom we looked for support and approval. At later stages in life, when adulthood arrives, we tend to project onto others in positions of potential power and authority those same roles and expectations. Mostly, this is done unconsciously. When we are ready to take responsibility for ourselves and accept that only we can make changes in our lives, it can still be frustrating. Basically, this negative energy can dog us even as we change our thought patterns, attitudes, and ability to love and value ourselves.
Life can beat up a person very severely. It reminds me of my experiences in the French higher education system, in which the professors were cued to instill in students a deep sense of inferiority and despair in order to incite these same students to work harder and reach for their own highest potential. I was never quite sure at the time how this philosophy was to be truly effective. In any case, the pedagogy was not based on connecting to a higher self nor on finding inspiration through expanded awareness.
Here is an interesting excerpt – just a few paragraphs, that I just read in Deepak Chopra’s small book, “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription”:
“Our current belief system, which insists that something must be tangible and concrete to be real, traps consciousness inside the brain. This is far too limiting. There is a ground state beyond space and time that conceives, governs and creates all events that occur in space-time. Imagine that before you have a thought or before an event takes place in the world, it begins as a seed in the ground state. The seed vibrates to life, moving from the subtlest level of nature to the grossest level, where the five senses can detect it. Quantum physics completely agrees with this idea. It even accepts that thoughts “in here” must come from the ground state, just like electrons and photons “out there”. The difference is that the world’s wisdom traditions link the two. They give primary value to awareness, while physics gives primary value to inert matter, although this is beginning to change.
Suppose you don’t like a situation in your life. You perceive that there is an outside circumstance or relationship that is at fault. Merely turning to positive thinking isn’t going to make a difference. You can think as positively as you like about your troubles, but this is a superficial mood; it doesn’t go the source. In fact, to artificially manipulate your thoughts, even in a positive direction, can increase stress and worsen the situation. The solution is to change both inner and outer reality simultaneously. Consciousness permeates everything. It functions to create change at four fundamental levels: being, feeling, thinking, and doing.”
So when we get stuck, Deepak Chopra is suggesting that we move out beyond the realm of the ego, the mind-set that provides solutions that never solve our problems because they are already part of the past. In this realm outside time and space where everything is potentially possible, we move out of conflict and drama. Through cleansing awareness, it would seem that our connection to the continuum that is life would allow us to be, feel, think, and act on a different level, and thus attract new energy and circumstances in our lives.
It makes perfect sense to me, and I am quite willing and happy to release my frustrated state to the winds. I now realize as I have read this book, that this frustration is my own creation, and that I have been holding on to it as a sort of identity crutch. Even while I have been working on myself and letting go of much negativity in my life, there are still many elements of conditioned thinking that are hindering my enjoyment of being me in the world. Basically, I have been judging myself, causing the world that touches me to constrict in my contact.
I am very thankful to all of the spiritual teachings and teachers in the world, visible and invisible. We all want happiness in our lives, and the means to achieve that bliss is readily available, if we want it.
adamevenevenadam 