Ready for a change in how things are going in life and our world? Many people are. There are many unsettling phenomena in our country, in our communities, and on our planet… at least when seen from the surface. The human tendency is to look for someone or something to blame when things are not going the way we think they should. Part of it may be due to our perspective.
Here’s an example: Two gentlemen ended up traveling to the same town. They left to go to their new city after being terminated because their company had downsized their respective departments. When the first gentleman settled in the new town, he was miserable. He looked around and concluded that everyone there were horrible, negative, selfish, and troublemaking people. He felt no one in the city could be trusted, and the time wouldn't come fast enough for him to leave. The second man had a different experience. His experience was that the people in the town were the best in the world. What he saw were hard-working, honest, and friendly folks everywhere he turned, and he hoped he would never have to leave.
Even though it was the same town for both men, they had two different experiences. This scenario is a reminder that we don't see things as they are; we see and experience things as we are. From a spiritual perspective, it is a reminder that "Life is Consciousness." Or put another way, it is the total of our beliefs. Consciousness is the foundation of all our experiences. That's because our consciousness determines the thoughts we think, which in turn influences our emotional state. Those states determine actions we take (or don't take) in life. And our actions dictate our life experiences.
One of the fundamental beliefs that many people hold to some degree or another is the conscious or unconscious belief, "I'm not enough." If we believe this notion that we are not enough, it often leads to a sense of unworthiness. If we feel unworthy, we may not pursue our heart's desires and thus don't get the results we want. Such misguided pursuits reinforce the belief that, "I'm not enough." The result is often an endless loop or pattern that we can't seem to discard.
So a relevant question to ask is, "How do we change our limiting beliefs?" Changing such beliefs is not an easy thing to do since they often have crystallized over a lifetime. We're not even conscious of many of them. It's not about reading more books or engaging in more personal development. It's not about more positive thinking or raising our vibrations (we can't "Om" our way out of these patterns). One strategy to transform our consciousness is to realize that beliefs are decisions. And if we want to reset the direction of our life, our communities, or our world to create a new future, we must make different decisions.
We can make new decisions every day. With each upgraded decision comes a new set of thoughts that support those decisions and a new set of emotions. The transformed emotions lead to actions in unity with those thoughts and feelings. The by-product is new results in our life. We don't always need to know how to make our new decisions happen. We need to decide. We begin to break up old patterns with each decision, and a new future begins to emerge. This is one way to alter our consciousness and change our lives, our communities, and our world.
Peace and Blessings,
James