How do habits of mind become formed. It is a developmental neural process based on repeated experience, repeated thought patterns, and repeated actions. All of this is tied in to the natural processes of neural plasticity.
One thing I find fascinating in my experience studying the brain, is how attention is a key component in the process of creating the networks. When we pay attention, we are actually shifting the blood flow in our own brain. We are causing neurite outgrowth, the formation of new neural connections. We are changing our brain based on what we pay attention to. Something that the neuroscience community talks less about, is who or what is directing the attention? That is where the concepts of a higher self become points of scientific inquiry. Here we start to tread new ground in neuroscience and enter into the arena of consciousness studies. During our second session of the SYC course, we focused on becoming aware of how we were exerting our mental energy. Knowing that this is a powerful and valuable asset. Our attention is being vied for, it is actually being paid for by advertisers and social media outlets. Why is it so precious? Clearly, it is the essence of our power. What I am paying attention to is shaping my brain and my reality? We then talked about aligning our thinking with our core values. This is a lot harder than you might think. The problem for most of us is that we have incredibly bad habits of mind. Our thinking goes straight to the negative. We have repeatedly created blocks to accessing our own power. How do I begin to turn my ship towards my deep inner vision? Well, at first you might just start a process I call doggie training. Just like training a dog, you repeat a new thought over and over. Repeating phrases will lay down tracts in your brain that can help you to start to choose what you want. Here is one I suggest you can begin with: "Is this thought aligned with my core values?" Try this for a week. Keep repeating this phrase throughout the day as you notice your thoughts. Then you may find that as you see a thought not aligned with your values, you can choose to let it go, or even ask yourself the next question. "What more helpful thought is there for me to be in alignment?" Wait and see what shows up. Enjoy exploring your thinking landscape my friends!
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The power of decision and resolution cannot be underestimated. I no longer need to wallow around in uncertainty and doubt.
What is it that your heart is calling you to do. Make a decision today that you will step boldly towards that goal. Make a resolution to fulfill your destiny. Life is not meaningless. You are not here for no reason. Delve deep into your soul and realize your hearts desires are God given. Now step onto your path today! We have been working with conflicting beliefs and trying to focus in on those beliefs that we want to nurture. The importance here is to remember our thoughts matter, but we are not victim to them.
In his seminar, discussing conflicting thoughts, Eckart Tolle gives a nice description of how the inner voice is a thought that lives as a tiny field of energy that we can either feed with our attention, or simply let pass. The (inner) voice is thought formations. These are energy. Every thought is an energy field, and each thought formation wants to draw your attention, suck it up into itself. "Come here," and the other [thought] says, "No, come here." It may sound a little spooky, but it is not spooky, You can regard a thought almost as an entity, Not a physical entity, but an energetic entity. That lives there, it has a life span, and some thoughts persist for a long time, and certain thought patterns are also entities that can shift and take on one form, and then another form. So every thought is a little entity or energy field. [When you identify with it it draws your focus] It wants to draw all your attention in, because the more attention it can draw in, the more it grows. It wants to grow. Like everything, it doesn’t want to disappear. It is for you to know, when this happens. Who am I? Are you this voice or that voice? No, I am aware of these voices. So when we become aware we have distance from our thoughts and can chose which thoughts to energize as they support our goals and healthy beliefs. I was listening to Abraham Hicks, and she briefly talked about the difference in energy in a belief versus when you just "know" something.
She states: Knowing has less resistance than belief. Doubt has a lot of resistance, belief still has sometimes, some particles of resistance, but knowing has no resistance. So how do we know something. It isn't a mental thing, it is the connection to our core, our higher self. It is connected to our purpose, and when we know there is no alternate. Eckhart Tolle talks about the conflicting inner voices, versus knowing here. It is a very interesting experience, in that when he has the experience of knowing there is no conflicting voice present. It simply is there calling him to do this. "What am I supposed to do in life? What is my real life mission? Sometimes you get paralyzed and then the mind comes up with all the reasons not to try something.. Instead of looking for the answer through the movement of thought-- there is never any real answer you arrive at through the movement of thought. You must first become present. then at some point, a thought may come that has a different energy field to it. A thought that you feel, yes, that’s it. There is a certain realization that comes that may finally take the form of a thought, for example when I was living in Europe and I had the thought, I have to leave. THere wasn’t another thought that said, “No I should stay”. So the question is, what really matters here is realizing that you are not this voice or that voice, you are something deeper, you are the awareness of the presence. Watch the full conversation here. https://youtu.be/QpBOcw5WQPg Listening to this reminded me of my own experience with starting the Community House. I had been thinking of what I could do with the money from my inheritance, and an idea would come, and I would say inwardly, "I could do this....with the money." and then the inner voice would say, "What else are you going to do with the money?" and then I would agree, "Right, what else am I going to do with the money?" So this went on several times, with fleeting ideas, and then the Community House became available. Again my head created the phrase, "What else are you going to do with the money!" And this time there was no response. Why? Because the Community House was the true option. One of the favorite things of many that Mary Sise shared in the presentation on EFT (or Tapping) was that when we clean up our beliefs we can be more effective in our lives.
“The work is to figure out what the [source of the negative emotional] energy is in there…often times where it’s stuck, just shows us…like if you were bullied, you would be triggered by bullies today…and you can clear that up…but that doesn’t mean that a bully will be your best friend, it is just that you won’t react. You will be able to take [the right] action. And when you do take action it will not seem too intense to the rest of the world. It will be soul action rather than reaction out of your wound action. “And that is why you become more powerful on the planet, because people can hear it in a different way. And you watch, your influence will shift. “I know who you are, I know your light, I know your divinity in form. Because I know that about me. , and I know that about everyone…and I know bad things happened, and it wasn’t great, but let’s get it cleaned up so that all of you can be here. So you can be the light that you came here to be. “You clean up all your stuff, you just have to walk on this planet, and you will make a difference…a big difference!” Truly when we are talking our talk (and that is our inner talk here) we are in integrity, and therefore can communicate more clearly. We are speaking not just what we think others want to hear, but what we truly believe. The negative beliefs are so sneaky, and we rarely allow ourselves time to really be aware of what they are saying. The first step is bringing all the beliefs into the light. We did that by starting a list. We can do that daily as we notice fearful beliefs starting to surface. What we want to do is to replace our fearful beliefs with the joyful beliefs aligned with our desires. We want to focus on deep desires, desires of the higher aspects of the self, not just material desires. When we are focused on those “heart centered” desires, we will have loads of support from the universe. We will be working with the quantum aspect of the world. Excerpt From: Free Will, Quantum Science, Heart Consciousness, and Creativity By Amit Goswami, PhD In Order to Change Your Life If you want to change your life today—to make it radically different tomorrow—you must engage in the creative process. This process requires the ability to respond without sifting through past memories. It also requires cohesiveness of intention, and purposefulness. You really have to wake up to the fact that you are not a machine randomly responding to chance events in the world. You are actually a purposeful, embodied consciousness. The universe has a purpose; it evolves in order to make better and better representations of love, beauty, justice, truth, goodness—all those things that Plato called archetypes. When you wake up to this purposefulness, you become focused. If you don’t tune in to the purposefulness of the universe, it all seems meaningless and you risk becoming hedonistic—you explore things that are pleasurable and avoid things that are painful. Your life will be driven by ordinary dreams—a big house, an expensive car, and other physical and material pleasures. But the real American Dream is about the pursuit of happiness, not pleasure. What’s the difference? Too much pleasure always ends up in pain. But have you ever had too much happiness? https://drive.google.com/file/d/15cVPArOGxlV5PRUnNTCAuzWgthEPyY6P/view?usp=sharing Today's first introductory session to our course Strengthening the Spiritual Core presented the main components of our next three months of self-exploration: the three aspects of the human being - the Intellectual Life, or mental life - the Feeling Life, the heart center - and the life of the Will, the act of creating. Our first month is focused on the mental life. This is the realm of beliefs and values. We started our session by looking at some of the beliefs we hold about ourselves and others, and also beliefs about the world. We looked at where these beliefs were not supporting our best interest. It is interesting to see how our own inner beliefs can be in conflict with each other. This first month we will do some work to try to identify and strengthen our healthy beliefs and core values. This is such important work. I was looking over some of my notes from earlier on this topic, and came across an article on Brene Brown from Forbes magazine. One of her core factors for being a leader is based on this same idea. She writes: Living Your Values (Rather Than Simply Professing Them) Get clear on what you believe and check that your intentions, words, thoughts and behaviors align with your beliefs. Name your values by writing them down. Then identify core behaviors that represent how you might live those values. And, what are the behaviors that tell you that you’re off course? Courageous leaders who live their values instead of just talking about them are never silent about hard things. For example, courageous leaders do not partake in willful blindness. As a leader, you must be aware of what is going on around you. You must realize when to act and know that sometimes you need to act in difficult situations. It takes courage to recognize these opportunities for leadership and to set an example for your team. Making decisions that honor your values will be tough because doing the right thing is rarely easy. We are all leaders in our own lives. We become leaders when I recognize what we want and move towards it. When we use our own inner compass to guide our decisions and actions rather than relying on on others to decide for us. We hope you can join us for our continuing conversation on how to connect to our deep inner purpose through strengthening our connection to who we truly are and who we want to be in the world. Please Join us Tuesday January 4th at 7PM CST. Abigail Larrison is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Abigail Larrison's Zoom Meeting Time: Jan 4, 2022 07:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81487706030 Meeting ID: 814 8770 6030 One tap mobile +13126266799,,81487706030# US (Chicago) +13017158592,,81487706030# US (Washington DC) Dial by your location +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 646 876 9923 US (New York) +1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) Meeting ID: 814 8770 6030 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kl7nejhZK |
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