How to transform negative patterns (part 2)

Part 1 here

This, however is just the first step to real transformation, there are 2 more steps before action is taken, which are incredibly important to the process.

Lets first look at why you are like you are, and why it is so difficult to make permanent changes in your life. 

It has been estimated that we think approximately 65,000 thoughts per day, and of those 65,000 thoughts, we thought 95% of them yesterday. Essentially we think the same thoughts every single day, which has us then make the same choices, take the same actions, and create the same feelings. Our feelings are incredibly important to how we interpret reality for ourselves. A simple example would be that if you feel good, then you’d interpret life as good, and conversely if you feel bad, then life would appear bad for you. Obviously then, if you can generate great feelings regularly, you'll get to experience life as being great and often.

Because you think the same thoughts and then feel the same way most of the time, you then believe this is who you are. The feelings become so strong within you that you interpret them as your normal personality. Then to keep that familiar personality in tact, you unconsciously make sure that you think the same thoughts again to generate the same feelings and on it goes. This is why it can be extremely difficult to create real long term lasting change.

I’m sure you can see now, that if you continue to put your attention on the same thoughts you've always had, you’ll keep generating the same life. What needs to happen is that you find a place to put your attention on that contains other possibilities. It’s in the now moment that you always find your physical self in, that contains infinite new potential realities. The major obstacle in the way of getting your attention firmly based in the now moment, however, is that you’ve had your attention in your stories about life most of your life, which, as I just described, keeps you in the same loop, and makes it almost impossible to make major changes.

So once you’ve gotten to a place of acceptance around your current reality, the next step is to begin the work of directing your attention to the moment you find yourself in, as opposed to the story you have about life. If your attention is in your stories about life, then you’re completely limited by those stories, whereas if your attention is regularly directed to the moment you find yourself in, you then have infinite possibilities and realities available to you. As you can see, where you place your attention, is crucial to the process of change and transformation. If you keep going to the stories you have about life, you’ll almost certainly keep generating the same results.

The practice of meditation is simply to enable you to become meditative, so that you are living your life with your attention in life, rather than in your stories about life or in other words, living in the moment. There are times when you need to have your attention in your thoughts, of course, but it would be best if your attention were in the moment, the majority of time as opposed to the minority, which is the case for most people. The more you practice meditation as a daily discipline, the more you’ll find yourself living in the present moment during the day. I know it is a cliché but the present moment is where all of life is going on always, and it’s where all new possible realities stem from, it’s definitely the place to hang out in, and when you are there often enough, the stories you have about life diminish their power over you.

The challenge to this part of the process of transformation, is learning to get your attention in to the moment as often as you can, and it’s not easy to start with because you have spent your entire life having your attention in your stories about life. So every time you try and get your attention in to the moment, the stories will demand you give them attention again, because you always have up until now, and what happens more often than not, is that you’ll go back into them. This is why most people give up so soon when they start to learn to meditate.

I always challenge my personal clients and students of my seminars to do 100-days of consecutive meditation, and if one day is missed, they have to go back to day one again. Less than 50% manage the 100-days on average, and of those that do, I would guess that less than 20% of those continue to do it as part of their normal daily life routine. Those that do do it, however, are able to create change more easily because they are regularly hanging out in the moment.

It’s important to understand that when I say hanging out in the moment, I mean that your attention is firmly in the moment, rather than in your thoughts about life. Obviously your physical body is always in the moment, and by the way, this is your greatest ally when starting to learn how to meditate. Whenever you remember, you keep bringing your attention to the body, preferably the breath because you can literally experience it working in the present moment. The most important part about meditation though, is to show up everyday - to get your ass there. The rest will fall into place if you just keep doing it.

The final part of the inner work needed to create transformation is to visualise your new reality so often, that it becomes real for you. 

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between what it sees in the outer world and what it sees in your thinking world. It’s all happening inside the brain, as far as your brain is concerned right, so whether you see it or think it, is the same to your brain. What quantum physicists are now revealing to us, is that we do absolutely affect the outer reality we find ourself in, and we do that because of the specific vibration we hold, and that vibration changes when we change our internal beliefs about life.

Everything is made of energy, and when that energy is looked at from the microscopic level, it turns out to be made of the same stuff. In this physical reality, the thing that makes the energy appear to be different from itself, is the vibration any particular thing is holding. So a dense stone, like a diamond, is vibrating at a very low frequency in comparison to something with a much higher frequency; like water for example. If we were then to examine those 2 examples I’ve just mentioned, at the microscopic level, we would find the exact same thing.

So everything you know in the world you live in, is made of the same stuff, but just vibrating at a different frequency. This includes people, things, thoughts and even situations, and whatever vibration a living conscious being holds, that vibration will attract similar vibrations to it - like attracts like.

Everything that you know about your life is like it is, because of all the beliefs you know at the conscious level about yourself, as well as all the beliefs and patterns that are happening at the unconscious level. Some scientists hypothesise that we are about 10% conscious, I personally think it's way lower than that, but the percentage doesn't really matter, the thing is is that most of what consists of being a human being, at the psychological level, is unconscious, which means that most of what we create is from that unconscious level.

We are manifesting reality all the time simply by being the vibration that we are. We draw to us everything that we are from both the conscious and unconscious levels. Because we are only conscious of a small percentage of who we really are, we don't believe that we are creating everything that we're creating, because most of the creation is happening from the unconscious level, which we can't see.

The key to conscious manifestation then, is to recognise that the whole show is happening the way it happens for you, because of the vibration that you are, which is based on the beliefs that you hold. If your life is not as you'd like it to be, then you now know that somewhere in your unconscious you have a belief that is making life the way it is for you, whether you like it or not.

It's important to understand that when I say you are creating everything in your life, you must also realise that everyone else around you is also doing the same, so what happens is that we co-create with each other.  
We play different roles for each other so that it's easy to see what's going on inside of us, or in other words, what beliefs we must be holding. As I mentioned in my blog post What to do when you’re emotionally challenged, your entire life experience is internal, meaning you don't actually know anything going on outside of you because life is always and in all ways happening within you, from your point of view of course.

So when certain people and situations show up in your life, you're always having that experience of those people or situations internally, and what it's actually showing you, are the beliefs and patterns you’re holding internally. Think about it, how could it not be about you, because you're having the experience within yourself, even though it looks like it is other people or situations going on around you, you are the one, from your point of view, experiencing the whole thing inside of yourself.

It appears as if it's not happening within you because you're looking through your eyes at a person or situation that is really happening in the outer world, but your experience of it is inside you. What is really going on is that your unconscious finds people and situations that have a similar vibration to all the different aspects of you, at that time in your life, and then miraculously brings them to you. 

Of course, all the people involved in your life, have also drawn you to them, for their learning experience also.

Once you understand this, it becomes much easier to see what patterns of beliefs you must be holding, because you just couldn't have the experiences you have if they didn't already exist in some form within you. 

A person who has an unconscious belief that they are not loveable for example, will always find themselves in destructive relationships or none at all. A person who has a deep seated belief that they are not worthy, will struggle to create wealth. A person who is afraid to be powerful will always find themselves in situations that offer them an opportunity to step up into their power, so they may be in situations where they feel they are being controlled. There is a reason you have the issues you have, because they are all offering you an opportunity to move beyond them and become a better person.

For something to change in your outer world, you must see it differently in your inner world first, and you must see it daily. It has to become so incredibly real for you internally that your brain thinks it's actually happening.

What most people do is look at their current outer world reality and wish it was different, their focus is on what they think the problem is, so the problem remains.  It cannot change because they keep seeing it the way it is, and so their vibration remains the same, and they always attract a similar vibration. 

The more challenging the outer world reality is for a person, the more difficult it is to see the new reality inside and trust that that new reality will come true, which is why many people stay in very difficult situations because they just don’t believe it could be different - their focus of attention is on the problem instead of the solution. If a person is living in poverty for example, it’s very difficult to imagine it could be different due to the very real experience they are having, but if they were to visualise a new reality every day, it would have to happen, it’s the law. Similarly, if someone  wants to lose weight and they start the process of change but then keep looking in the mirror at their overweightness, then their focus is still on the weight instead of the new vision.

One of the other major stumbling blocks for people trying to make big changes in their life, is that they focus intently on ‘how’ are they going to do it, rather than simply looking at and experiencing the final result within, as if it had already happened. The how will take care of itself, because the brain will simply follow the direction of the new vision. If you keep seeing the new vision, everything that is needed for it to become real will be given to you, and you’ll take the actions without giving it too much thought. That’s not the case in the beginning however, because the vision is not strong enough yet, but once it is and your discipline of daily mediation and visualisation are intact, the magic will happen.

So to summarise:

1. Get to absolute acceptance of where you are now
2. Learn to bring your attention into the moment a thousand times a day, come back to the moment. A daily meditation discipline, makes this much easier.
3. Visualise your new reality every day, with as much excited feeling as possible. If the feeling remains the same, you’ll keep getting the same reality.
4. Take the appropriate action and always be willing to change that as and when you’re guided.

Other blog posts:

What is the definition of Visualisation

How to find what you're passionate about

What is Meditation

What to do when you're emotionally challenged

The best way to relax yourself with immediate effect