WORLD, CREATED BY YOU

Alone in a world you made yourself

You are all alone in a world you made yourself. Everything that you see, the problems, the dysfunction, all is a reflection of you. All the things you are afraid of, that keep you awake in the night and wake you in the morning with a vague, pervading unease, all the anxiety you ever felt, all are the creation of your own mind, your own psyche, whatever you want to call yourself.

There is a part of you that creates, throwing out images before yourself like a fisherman casting out a net. You throw these ideas out so forcefully by your constant thinking, that they are the only reality you can admit. It is not possible to admit any reality that you have not thought of first.

For example, if you think that everyone cheats, and everyone has his price, then your mind, so instructed, will seek out examples of cheating and corruption. What the mind looks for, it easily finds. You will find examples wherever you look. Similarly, if you think people are innately good and kind, then your mind, so instructed, will notice examples of goodness and kindness everywhere.

You bring both your blessings and your ills upon yourself, by your thinking.

You have the power to change this at any time.

You have the power to change this at any time. You can get off the mad roller coaster of fear, depression and anxiety. You can be out of the grip of seemingly random events controlling your emotional state. You can regain a sense of calm and balance.

Who would not want this?

The answer lies in making conscious decisions about your life instead of allowing unconscious programming to control you. If you have not made the decision not to live by unconscious programming, then that is what you are doing. That is how you all live, until you decide not to. That is the meaning of original sin.

We are the puppets of our unconscious programming. We accept judgments about ourselves without even questioning them.

“I’m a procrastinator; that’s how I’ve always been.”

“I have a hard time trusting people. It’s because of my parents’ divorce.”

“My older sister is the smart one.”

Just naming a thought gives you the consciousness to examine it dispassionately and take it apart. For example, take “I’m a procrastinator.” Is this a thought you have about yourself? Examine it. Do you like being a procrastinator? Have there ever been any problems with that? Have you missed out on opportunities because of it? Have you always been one? No? Why did you become one? Why do you mention it now? Are you proud of it? And so on. Question that thought for at least seventeen seconds, which is how long it takes to form a new neural connection securely. In this way is a judgment weakened.

You can destroy any illusion by examining it

You are all alone in a world you created. For you is that a frightening, depressing thought? Do you like the world you created? Does it scare you? Do your fears make you tense?

Or is that a joyful thought, a thought that truly lifts you up because it gives you the power to remake your world to be more peaceful and enjoyable than before? You have the power to make it better. What is this but the best news you could ever hear? You need not be a pawn of unconscious programming who gets to the end of physical life before he figures out he got it all wrong.

The choice is always yours. Any moment you are alive, you can weaken negative thoughts. You can consciously remind yourself to choose positive programming. You can choose the thoughts you want to have. You can choose the adjectives, nouns, and pronouns you want to apply to yourself.

Ah Love, could Thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!

Would we not shatter it to bits, and then

Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

JUDGMENTS: LET THEM GO

Comparisons are judgments

All comparisons are judgments. “She is prettier than her sister.” “You are a better worker than before.” “My group is more intelligent than other groups.” Consequently, do not respond to comparisons. Deny the ego.

Adjectives are judgments

All adjectives are judgments: brown, small, complicated. Do not get attached to adjectives and the attributes they are the signposts for. You spend your lives in pursuit of certain labels that you have attached value to: educated, cool, fashionable, smart, sympathetic, has good taste, and so on. But why have you attached value to any of them? It can only be because you think they would make you better, because you presently are not perfect.

How much better it is to turn inward and know that what you desire to be, you already are. Then there is no striving. Only peace.

You also get stuck like glue to adjectives whose meanings you don’t enjoy: stressed, nervous, unattractive, uninteresting, and then defend them. How many times have you heard someone going to bat for negative traits of themselves?

“That’s just me. That’s the way I am.”

I let go what does not serve

A monarch butterfly is emerging fresh and new from its chrysalis, as we emerge fresh and new when we eschew judgments

Photo by Bankim Desai on Unsplash

Has there ever been a negative aspect you have embraced in this way? “I’m impatient with slow people. I’ve always been like this. My mother was the same way…” and on and on, an endless spiral of justifications, rationalizations, hairsplitting details, minute comparisons, all the beloved domain of the ego. There you go again, completely taken over by the surface personality that you think you are.

What if instead you looked at that root thought, whatever it might be, whether “I am fat”, or “I can’t speak in public”, or “I have nothing to say.” Shine the light of your consciousness on it. Focus close up on that thought. See that thought wriggle with discomfort in your attention. Then ask that thought, “Do you really even have to be here?”

Sometimes, a quick glimpse of illumination from the light of the inner being which asks this question, is enough to send the thought packing, like a thief who has been caught red-handed.

Let me have no other desire than to do good

Image by Janice De Santis

THE PAST: TRANSCEND IT

The past does not even exist. If it does, where is it?

There is no need to let the past define you.

Everyone remembers the past differently. How can it be said to exist independently?

It is said that they who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. But by remembering it, are you not repeating it? By taking out those past images and memories and holding onto them, strengthening them, polishing them like beads on a rosary, do you not also give energy to them?

Do you want to be always digging over the past?

Transcend the past

The right way to deal with the past is to transcend it. “Transcend” means “rise above”. That person you were, who the past happened to, does not exist anymore in the same form. All that was unnecessary, cumbersome, awkward and slowing you down, all of that has been left at the side of the road hundreds of miles and many years ago. That person you were had things happen to her. This person you are now, observes and chooses experiences.

I allow myself to be changed for the better

What weighed you down in the past?

All judgments, large and small. If you believe that everyone who gets a divorce is bad, then that puts you in a dichotomy. Either you are good and do not divorce, even though you may be perpetuating a dangerous or miserable situation, or you divorce and are bad. All the negative feelings you had projected outwards onto the divorced ones, you must now take upon yourself. Your judgment has come to beat you with a stick.

Let us eschew judgments. If we knew the difficulties and despair that most of us live with, we would praise each other just for being here. We judge a situation only when we cannot see all of it, anyway. When we know the truth, we do not judge. Let us replace judgments with a desire for enlightenment.

What else ties you to the past? All disagreements, grudges and arguments. Be free of them all at once. Forgive the other for whatever you think she did to you. Realize that was part of who you thought she was then. It was your need to think of her that way and use her for an agent, so you could nurse hurt and anger. You would like now to free both of you from the past.

Hurl the past away from you.

What else weighs you down? All unwanted, useless possessions. All the junk that is clogging your spaces, everything that you don’t presently use but cannot let go of. Each thing you hold onto represents a fear.

We all cling to worthless possessions out of fear. “But I might need it some day.” “It has sentimental value.” “So and so gave it to me.”

We are all hoarders until we decide not to be.

Keep life spare

If it is not a part of your now experience, if it does not belong to the person you wish to be, discard it. Sell it, give it away, pass it along, become a channel, open up a flow. Doing this, you open the way for real value to arrive.

Throw away all negative evaluations of yourself; they are worthless junk from the past. Who cares if you’re a cheater like your father, or not? Let us transcend the past. Choices are not dichotomies, as you like to think. “Either I go to college and get a fulfilling job and am happy, or I will not go and be a failure forever.” No.

The number of paths in front of you at any time is always infinite. If it even exists in your imagination, it exists somewhere and is capable of manifesting into this physical world. Why would you be linked to the binary choice of either living out the past, or not?

Forget it instead. Let the dead bury their dead.

Let us rise above it

Noël Coward

EGO, AN INSECURE TYRANT

Rare indeed is the person who is not ruled by the raging ego. Rare is the person who is free from this jealous, insecure, shrieking tyrant.

Any person who has fears of inadequacy, however small, is not free of the ego. It is telling her, nothing that you presently have or are, matters. As long as you don’t have a degree, your teeth are crooked, you’re the wrong shape, you don’t have enough money, you’re not married, or any one of a myriad of conditions you impose upon yourself, you are not good enough.

Any person who wakes up with vague, unspecified anxiety is not free. Ego has ridden him well, filling his mind with possible frightening outcomes so that he, like some poor prisoner, has lost the ability to determine his own mood. Ego has this person firmly in hand. When he wakes up with anxiety, he casts his mind over the frightening areas of his life and quickly finds one to be anxious about.

No one who worries even the least bit about what others think of him is free. It is only the ego that forces you to worry about how you are seen. The real you knows who you are, and that you are genuine, real and valuable. Ego does not want you to know this, and so fills your mind with questions of self-worth and importance.

No one who values any person differently than another is free. If you exhibit a more deferential attitude talking to your boss than to the janitor, what are you doing except promoting the interests of the little self?

You hope for more from the boss: he can give you money, raises, promotions, importance and attention. Ego loves to keep you thinking about these. But reflect: if you truly didn’t care about these rewards because your larger Self knew that your needs were always going to be taken care of, this would free you to give the boss and the janitor the same deference. It is thus only the ego that makes you see differences in people.

I must be genuine

It is only the ego that nurses grievances, takes offence, begrudges the good of others, gossips, and secretly rejoices in misery. If you truly believed you were perfect, and could access this perfection anytime at all, nothing could move you to slight or injure your brothers. It is not in the ego’s interest that you realize that the thing you wish to be, you are already, so it keeps your mind frantic with thoughts of littleness and fears of destruction.

Rise up and say: I have no use for this

Ego loves comparisons. Whether you win or lose by them matters not at all. If you think you are smarter, better, more powerful, beautiful and important than others, or the opposite, worthless and powerless, either way you are preoccupied with questions of self-worth, and overtaken by emotions.

When you are occupied by questions of self-worth, Ego has won

But Ego itself is monstrously insecure. It worries constantly that you will wake up and know the truth about yourself. It is afraid that you will soon see there is another way. The only way to prevent this is to keep your mind racing with doubts and fears.

Ego loves emotions, turmoil and drama.

If you want to thwart it, seek out quiet places and emptiness. There, it does not like to come.

If you want to thwart it, practice calling it out. Tell yourself, “I see that my insecurity in this situation is a manipulation of the ego, and I choose to set it down right now.” Each time you do this, a cosmic muscle is strengthened and Ego is weakened. It cannot survive after this, no more than a two-legged chair can stand. Once the process is started, it must be complete. Thus do you practice and perfect eluding its grasp.

Let Me Maximize You

Transformational change: the least you need to know