Today, it's difficult for some of us to even admit we have toxic beliefs, much less think of ourselves as being victims of the myths and illusions we have embodied as our realities.
So, let's set the record straight from the outset: Victims are created. We are not born victims, we are born into a victimized world of myths and illusions.
It really doesn't matter where we are born, the world provides us with its own wisdom. We get it from society, parents, and our own life experiences. We accept this information because it's all we know at the time.
Unfortunately, this information is toxic. It causes us to become dependent on certain beliefs that define us according to race, gender, color, country, and even states or cities.
It even causes us to add victimization to the adage" Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes." In other words, it's inescapable.
Nevertheless, if we are all born into a victimized world, then how do we free ourselves from what we have been taught? How do we unlearn victimization?
After we settle in to calling the world our homes, it's difficult to imagine anything else. We don't want it to change because the change would alter our perceptions of ourselves.
We learn to feel good about ourselves. We even rationalize that even though the world seems unfair, that's just the way it is. And only the strong survive.
The idea or notion of survival itself comes from our lack of understanding about ourselves. Most of us think of survival as the opposite of dying. So we're basically afraid of dying or ceasing to exist in the world we have come to know and love.
Most of us don't know why we want to live. We are constantly asking ourselves and others about ways to determine our purposes for being in the world.
And because we seem not to know our purposes for being in the world, it follows we also don't know why we seek the things -- money, fame, power, wisdom, and so forth -- to help us define our purposes.
Life as we know it is a myth. It is nothing more than our beliefs in illusory concepts of human behavior, societal wisdom, and ignorance about our purposes.
Meanwhile, if life is a myth, then are we also myths? Well, most of us know that we are not myths. We know that we have been conditioned to think, act, and live a certain way. The problem for us is we just don't know what to do about it.
We want to change, but change to what? What else can we become other than what the world has shown us.
We even clog our minds with semantic debates about freedom, dualism, and going to a mystical place we know even less about than the world we are in now.
Well, some of us believe the key to understanding the myths and illusions victimizing our minds is found in our minds. At least that part of our minds that has not been conditioned to think and act as victims.
This is the clarity of enlightenment that will free the mind to perceive the other limitless possibilities available for us to use to overcome our toxic beliefs.
For us, enlightenment exists only in our unconditioned consciousness -- the timeless awareness of life itself. From this consciousness we can imagine ourselves to be whatever we choose. There are no limitations placed on our being.
To imagine ourselves as free means we are free of the myths and illusions ruling the world. It's that simple.
Enlightenment, once you gain the awareness, is clear and easy to understand. And, unlike victim-laden changes; where we go from one illusion to another, it's real clarity of purpose.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
"Seeking Permission from Others"
Regardless to what people say, it's difficult to trust ourselves. We have been trained to seek outside information before we make the tough decisions. This is all a part of our human development.
One of the primary goals of enlightenment is to free the mind of the toxic beliefs we have been taught by others. And to do this, we must be willing to examine the formation of our beliefs. So, trust in ourselves is key to this process.
Several weeks ago, I read a great chapter in "Seeds from the Ashes," which I will share with you. The part I am sharing focuses on "Seeking Permission from Others."
"On your journey to discover the power you have to change the way you think, act, work, and live, you will have moments when you distrust yourself.
"During those moments when you feel isolated and unsure of yourself, there will be a tendency to seek guidance from others on whether you should continue on your journey.
"There are usually some people in your life that you respect and admire for their accomplishments. You value these individuals' opinions about you. You seek their advice on matters of great importance to you.
"If they say it is okay to move forward with an idea, it gives you comfort and confidence. Conversely, if they say you shouldn't move forward with your idea, it might cause you to second-guess yourself."
"These individuals represent your support system.
"There is another support system available to you. This one is far greater than your current one, because it advises you on how to change your life. This is a support system of one, you.
"You can use it whenever you want because it is within your mind -- intuitive consciousness -- where you will find this great support system that will give you the necessary power to change the way you think and live.
"You must know that you do not need permission from anyone, except you, to change the way you think and live. Someone told me a few months ago, 'It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.'
"It is better for you to take action based on your ideas rather than asking someone else's permission."
Oh, the joys of enlightenment. We find so much information within our minds.
One of the primary goals of enlightenment is to free the mind of the toxic beliefs we have been taught by others. And to do this, we must be willing to examine the formation of our beliefs. So, trust in ourselves is key to this process.
Several weeks ago, I read a great chapter in "Seeds from the Ashes," which I will share with you. The part I am sharing focuses on "Seeking Permission from Others."
"On your journey to discover the power you have to change the way you think, act, work, and live, you will have moments when you distrust yourself.
"During those moments when you feel isolated and unsure of yourself, there will be a tendency to seek guidance from others on whether you should continue on your journey.
"There are usually some people in your life that you respect and admire for their accomplishments. You value these individuals' opinions about you. You seek their advice on matters of great importance to you.
"If they say it is okay to move forward with an idea, it gives you comfort and confidence. Conversely, if they say you shouldn't move forward with your idea, it might cause you to second-guess yourself."
"These individuals represent your support system.
"There is another support system available to you. This one is far greater than your current one, because it advises you on how to change your life. This is a support system of one, you.
"You can use it whenever you want because it is within your mind -- intuitive consciousness -- where you will find this great support system that will give you the necessary power to change the way you think and live.
"You must know that you do not need permission from anyone, except you, to change the way you think and live. Someone told me a few months ago, 'It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.'
"It is better for you to take action based on your ideas rather than asking someone else's permission."
Oh, the joys of enlightenment. We find so much information within our minds.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Looking Inside for the Answers
When we are troubled and feel victimized by our problems, we find it difficult to search within ourselves for the solutions. For one thing, we don't know where to look.
All of this talk about inner power has little meaning when we are faced with delinquent mortgages, credit card debts, and prolonged unemployment. All we can think about is how to get the money to pay our bills.
And if we believed there is something actually within us that would provide us with the money we need, we would have already discovered it years ago.
Looking within ourselves for answers is for most of us similar to our praying for rain. The rain comes whenever it comes and there's nothing we can do about it.
So there is little need for most people to even take the inner-power statement seriously. And when we do take it seriously, many of us turn our attention to finding someone to help us discover this power.
WE typically go to people who profess to have discovered inner power. We cling to their every word, almost begging them to lead us to this power so we can pay our bills.
There's usually a price for this information -- time, money, commitment, and loyalty -- if we want to get the full benefit of it. The more we give of ourselves, the greater chance we have of discovering our inner power.
Meanwhile, when we get a job, pay our bills or save our homes, we naturally attribute the results to our inner power. We opine that we stuck with it and look at us now.
After we believe we have discovered our inner power, we think this is the answer to all our problems. Unfortunately, unbeknown to us, we must return again and again and seek guidance from the people who taught us how to find our power.
Now what we find interesting about inner power, and our search for it, is that it's nothing more than great clarity within our minds to free us of our powerless beliefs. This clarity can be accessed simply by taking the time to understand how we first came to distrust ourselves as the solvers of our own problems.
Inner power or unconditioned consciousness has a limitless capacity to go beyond our current awareness of ourselves, the power we have, and our relationship with others. It's within us as a fail safe mechanism to protect us from the illusions we believe in and worship with our time and resources.
For many of us unconditioned consciousness is just as elusive as inner power: We don't know how to find it much less use it to enlighten ourselves.
At the practical awareness of life, we can only believe in the realness of the illusions we have given life to. So the first thing we must do is create enough space in our minds to clearly understand that our problems come from us.
We endow them with the power to live in our lives as long as we want them to. They endure because we allow them to.
For us to remove the illusions from our lives, we must first have the clarity of mind to understand their origins and how and why we created them.
This process allows us to perceive our illusions of debts, unemployment, and home foreclosures as being the results of our actions, whether we were aware of them or not.
When create the space for clarity in our minds, we have the awareness of the transformative power in us. At this level of awareness our minds become active with transformation.
We now know the illusions exist only within our minds. And their realness is there because of our lack of understanding about what we have created in our lives.
When we become aware of what we are doing, we also become aware of the power we have to create pleasant and unpleasant results in our lives.
This awareness of the undiscovered power within our minds is what it means to discover our inner power or unconditioned consciousness. It's something we can do without charge, except for our commitment to trust our own power.
All of this talk about inner power has little meaning when we are faced with delinquent mortgages, credit card debts, and prolonged unemployment. All we can think about is how to get the money to pay our bills.
And if we believed there is something actually within us that would provide us with the money we need, we would have already discovered it years ago.
Looking within ourselves for answers is for most of us similar to our praying for rain. The rain comes whenever it comes and there's nothing we can do about it.
So there is little need for most people to even take the inner-power statement seriously. And when we do take it seriously, many of us turn our attention to finding someone to help us discover this power.
WE typically go to people who profess to have discovered inner power. We cling to their every word, almost begging them to lead us to this power so we can pay our bills.
There's usually a price for this information -- time, money, commitment, and loyalty -- if we want to get the full benefit of it. The more we give of ourselves, the greater chance we have of discovering our inner power.
Meanwhile, when we get a job, pay our bills or save our homes, we naturally attribute the results to our inner power. We opine that we stuck with it and look at us now.
After we believe we have discovered our inner power, we think this is the answer to all our problems. Unfortunately, unbeknown to us, we must return again and again and seek guidance from the people who taught us how to find our power.
Now what we find interesting about inner power, and our search for it, is that it's nothing more than great clarity within our minds to free us of our powerless beliefs. This clarity can be accessed simply by taking the time to understand how we first came to distrust ourselves as the solvers of our own problems.
Inner power or unconditioned consciousness has a limitless capacity to go beyond our current awareness of ourselves, the power we have, and our relationship with others. It's within us as a fail safe mechanism to protect us from the illusions we believe in and worship with our time and resources.
For many of us unconditioned consciousness is just as elusive as inner power: We don't know how to find it much less use it to enlighten ourselves.
At the practical awareness of life, we can only believe in the realness of the illusions we have given life to. So the first thing we must do is create enough space in our minds to clearly understand that our problems come from us.
We endow them with the power to live in our lives as long as we want them to. They endure because we allow them to.
For us to remove the illusions from our lives, we must first have the clarity of mind to understand their origins and how and why we created them.
This process allows us to perceive our illusions of debts, unemployment, and home foreclosures as being the results of our actions, whether we were aware of them or not.
When create the space for clarity in our minds, we have the awareness of the transformative power in us. At this level of awareness our minds become active with transformation.
We now know the illusions exist only within our minds. And their realness is there because of our lack of understanding about what we have created in our lives.
When we become aware of what we are doing, we also become aware of the power we have to create pleasant and unpleasant results in our lives.
This awareness of the undiscovered power within our minds is what it means to discover our inner power or unconditioned consciousness. It's something we can do without charge, except for our commitment to trust our own power.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Development of a Toxic Mind
One day, and usually without any warning, we realize our minds are overwhelmed by toxic beliefs. They're there, creating all kinds of havoc in our lives, but we don't know exactly where they come from. All we really know is there's something unknown within our minds that's responsible for the suffering in our lives.
The first place some of us look for answers is outside of our minds. We do so because it's difficult for us to believe our suffering comes from inside of us. So we search for answers outside of ourselves.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons for us to believe that most of our toxic beliefs came from outside of us. Since we're born into a highly toxic world, and since our beliefs came from this world, we believe the world is responsible for our suffering.
And for most of us, this is valid. While it is valid, it is not the complete reason for our toxic minds. We also participated willingly, in the sense that we were unaware of any alternatives, in our own development of toxic minds.
Unfortunately, even our absence of alternatives don't clearly reveal to us exactly how and why we were taught these beliefs. We didn't see any warning signs that what we were being taught could be harmful to us later on in life. Everything in our development seemed like an innocuous learning process.
Our learning process to become human is entrusted to society, parents, and our own life experiences. So there's little reason for us to believe or fear language and history, spiritual and cultural values, racial and class distinctions as being harmful to us. We just continue to accept all this information into our fertile, nontoxic minds.
At some point in our development, we begin to perceive ourselves as individuals with certain physical and psychological attributes that separate us from others. We begin to believe we are unique.
And within our uniqueness we believe we have free will, special God-given talents, and a purpose in life that others don't necessarily possess. We translate our uniqueness into individualism, which allows us to believe we are somehow different from others.
Meanwhile, we begin to observe that others have this uniqueness, too. Some of them have different language and history backgrounds, different spiritual and cultural values, and they belong to different racial and class groups.
After awhile, we begin to accept the toxic beliefs as part of our uniqueness. They make us different from others, even though others have toxic beliefs, too.
Similarly, from our life experiences, we also accept that there are few, if any, alternatives to the beliefs and values we use to confirm our uniqueness. So, even after we have the power to teach ourselves new beliefs and values, we continue to hold on to the toxic ones.
For some of us to go beyond our uniqueness, we must be willing to explore alternative knowledge to create a new awareness of ourselves that's void of ego-driven uniqueness. In other words, we have to create a new person; a sort of psychologically rebirth of our minds.
To go beyond the illusory uniqueness that's caused by our toxic beliefs, we must believe and search within our minds for the unconditioned awareness that remains unaffected by toxic beliefs.
This inner power or unconditioned consciousness is there for us to use to teach ourselves limitless beliefs and values to liberate our minds of toxic beliefs. The price for this awareness is the willingness to search for the inner power or unconditioned consciousness within our minds.
The first place some of us look for answers is outside of our minds. We do so because it's difficult for us to believe our suffering comes from inside of us. So we search for answers outside of ourselves.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons for us to believe that most of our toxic beliefs came from outside of us. Since we're born into a highly toxic world, and since our beliefs came from this world, we believe the world is responsible for our suffering.
And for most of us, this is valid. While it is valid, it is not the complete reason for our toxic minds. We also participated willingly, in the sense that we were unaware of any alternatives, in our own development of toxic minds.
Unfortunately, even our absence of alternatives don't clearly reveal to us exactly how and why we were taught these beliefs. We didn't see any warning signs that what we were being taught could be harmful to us later on in life. Everything in our development seemed like an innocuous learning process.
Our learning process to become human is entrusted to society, parents, and our own life experiences. So there's little reason for us to believe or fear language and history, spiritual and cultural values, racial and class distinctions as being harmful to us. We just continue to accept all this information into our fertile, nontoxic minds.
At some point in our development, we begin to perceive ourselves as individuals with certain physical and psychological attributes that separate us from others. We begin to believe we are unique.
And within our uniqueness we believe we have free will, special God-given talents, and a purpose in life that others don't necessarily possess. We translate our uniqueness into individualism, which allows us to believe we are somehow different from others.
Meanwhile, we begin to observe that others have this uniqueness, too. Some of them have different language and history backgrounds, different spiritual and cultural values, and they belong to different racial and class groups.
After awhile, we begin to accept the toxic beliefs as part of our uniqueness. They make us different from others, even though others have toxic beliefs, too.
Similarly, from our life experiences, we also accept that there are few, if any, alternatives to the beliefs and values we use to confirm our uniqueness. So, even after we have the power to teach ourselves new beliefs and values, we continue to hold on to the toxic ones.
For some of us to go beyond our uniqueness, we must be willing to explore alternative knowledge to create a new awareness of ourselves that's void of ego-driven uniqueness. In other words, we have to create a new person; a sort of psychologically rebirth of our minds.
To go beyond the illusory uniqueness that's caused by our toxic beliefs, we must believe and search within our minds for the unconditioned awareness that remains unaffected by toxic beliefs.
This inner power or unconditioned consciousness is there for us to use to teach ourselves limitless beliefs and values to liberate our minds of toxic beliefs. The price for this awareness is the willingness to search for the inner power or unconditioned consciousness within our minds.
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