Parenting offers the chance to rewrite history. It gives you the chance to choose which aspect of your childhood you want to model for your children and which aspect you want to change.
Be –ing the change you wish to see in the world requires an understanding of what interferes with your own joy and what limits your consciousness.
You can use this knowledge as your guide toward mindfulness. An awareness of differing perspectives creates the space to embrace paradigm shifting to increase awareness and find connecting points.
As you practice this you will discover that you are drawn to connecting and solving problems devoid of hate and anger, proof and defensiveness.
This can be applied to every aspect of your life including from how you consume, to how your model relationships and partnerships, to how you parent.
The inner and outward congruence of joy, forgiveness, compassion, and real interest or curiosity in the other leads to real power to change not only your world and sphere of influence but the world.
Happiness is a state of mind – it reflects your inner capacity to be the best you can be.
I am grateful at this time in my life to see this gentle, mindful, compassionate, strength, and sense of empowerment in both my son and my daughter. I feel joy in my own release from the prison of proof and defensiveness that separates humans, and gratefulness in the path chosen by my children.
Look into your children’s eyes see that joy and empowerment. This is how you can change the world, by modeling your commitment to practice mindfulness and compassion in your interactions and parenting.
Just as water through its persevering flow along a crevice can create a canyon, so too can you transform your environment through this gentle, persevering pressure of mindfulness, compassion and non-violence.
First you must see it in your mind’s eye then you can create it and see it reflected all around you.
To increase your capacity for mindfulness, compassion, forgiveness, and non-violence practice Yoga, prayer, meditation, internal paradigm shifting, listening to understand before speaking to prove, through these practices, in time, your will shift your perspective and through this your words and actions. Namaste, in love and light, beth
Soul guidance is a set of 5 easy steps to shift your focus so that you can have your heart center guide your path.
Anxiety and guilt wreak havoc on the human spirit and lead to breath-holding, inflexibility, and burning off of true soul guidance.
To see your way through these two habitual ways of letting fear separate you from your true self and true path –
1st. begin with a simple review of your breath,your senses, your emotions, and your muscles. What ever you find notice it – tension, flexibility an inner grimace, tightness –
2nd connect these – emotion to breath holding, and tightness or rigidity in movement
3rd Discern which aspects of your inner sensory guidance system reveals intuition and which reveal fear -here are the most common: Fear: pit of stomach tightness-fear, anxiety in chest breath holding-fear, inflexibility in hips-fear (trauma), inability to think clearly and utilize mindfulness-fear Intuition: quiet light voice in the center of your being-intuition – may be in you heart or your mind, this has a sense of ringing clear through your spiritual, emotional physical field – it allows openness, neutrality, space, and mindfulness.
4th Now feed the intuition
5th release the fear.
Breath is the key. Breathing through to trust and have faith in your knowing requires deep full breathing drawing into you the power of the knowing. Breathing through as you release the fear, allowing it to disconnect from you, letting go as you release the lack of power.
Simple and easy
If you shift your energy slightly, you can change your life in a big way! Try it with something small first to practice your skills of letting go – then increase your intention and focus until each day you simply adjust and release and follow your inner guidance
Love the simplicity? It’s all within you, pay attention when something seems to go in crooked or doesn’t feel right or causes you to withdraw – this is a message from your sensory guidance system. Respond accordingly. Engage your critical thinking and your mindfulness, and respond to what you discover. When you feel stuck, unworthy, anxiety or fear, breathe, and go through these steps to release the fear and embrace your inner knowing.
Listen to your true voice – the sound will be sure and firm, loving and compassionate, light and quiet.
Ignore the loud fear-filled, guilt-filled, anxiety voice. Avoid defensiveness deciding your course of action.
Choose the sweet loving inner smile of love and joy – live there and everything you desire will be at your fingertips to create.
This honors you and creates an opportunity for your inner being to guide your life and results in resilient, flexible powerful action.in love and light, beth
Habits and paradigms are tricky. A habit can be defined as something that guides you toward success or shifts you into a rut out of which you are always struggling to evolve. Paradigms give you your first structure of morality, right/wrong stories, and modes to interpret the world. Habits and paradigms work right up to the point they become obsolete. When you feel stuck or clinging to a habit or paradigm that feeling may be a sign that you need to birth through to the next way.
Challenging your paradigmatic perspective including your habitual reaction patterns allows you to discover a deeper and fuller experience in your relationships and work environment.
Not long ago I encountered a dead-end on my path. At least I thought that was what it was at the time.
I had gone as far as I could in the pursuit of something. I had reached a stopping point but not reached the goal. At least that stopping point didn’t look like my picture of the goal. I felt discouraged. I didn’t want to turn around and go back, but I could go no further.
So I sat down where I was. I stopped pushing. I looked around. I looked within. I began breathing and focusing on what I felt as well as what I saw. With my breath and focus the energy around me shifted. It was as if I was vibrating into a new level of consciousness.
As I sat there I felt inconsolable. I had become attached to the goal I was pursuing. At first my attitude didn’t allow for me to see anything positive. I could only see through the eyes of my disillusionment. Then I began to see through an attitude of gratitude. I began to notice some wondrous things around me: extraordinary relationships and family; time and freedom to pursue my dreams; support; love; space; an inner awareness. This awareness, breath, gratitude, and peacefulness filled me and opened up an inner imaginal world filled with plausible creations.
I realized the dead-end was a logical conclusion of my limited thinking and perception – an inner shifting of paradigms and habits.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t reached the goal, it was that my goal had transformed. I had shifted from pursuing an independent, proving, route to experiencing and developing a collaborative, integrative, holistic, path. This required me to shift my perspective, my habits, and my capacity to take in what was around me, to see through a different lens.
At once, with this realization, I noticed a beautiful path that veered off just to edge from my sitting place. It was a slightly elevated pathway that was not immediately noticeable, hidden from view when looking straight ahead or downward. It was light and airy, covered in a material that was vastly different from the path on which I had been walking. I could only see the way, through my new perspective of present moment now and receiving joy.
The hard work, perseverance, and hard choices, the trauma and difficulties of my youth had created a primary paradigm that anything of worth required this set of behaviors. And that I had to prove who I was, a doing, rather than being style of living. What I had endured to get to this point could only bring me this far on my path.
Only via these new lessons of ease, joy, laughter, love – that lovely concept of flow could I see the way through. An evolution of consciousness was the action required to take my next step. And this evolution comes from a releasing, a relaxing, and a letting go rather than a persevering, pushing attitude. The shift in consciousness creates the new paradigm in a quantum-style movement, rather than a linear movement. Each new paradigm births through its predecessor through a natural shifting of perspective.
If you are feeling stuck or clinging intensely to your habitual style of behaving, thinking, or believing; if you are feeling defensiveness, anger, anxiety or discouraged stop where you are, both metaphorically and physically. Take the time to feel into your ideas, your habits, your goals, and beliefs. Open yourself to the attitude of gratitude, notice everything that is working in your life, environment, relationships, and work. Through this space you will find an evolution in your consciousness so that you can shift your perspective and birth yourself into a new paradigm of living and being. in love and light, beth
Following these steps to increase awareness and allowing creates space to respond effectively and change your behavior.
An easy way to begin is the Stop, Look, and Listen method.
Stop multitasking or whatever action in which you are involved that may split your attention or where you feel you are being pulled along a track in an habitual thinking/behaving way; Look, or pay attention by bringing your attention to the situation at hand, pay attention to the actions of others and yourself and how relevant these are to the whole of the situation; Listen to your inner voice and the style, tone, timber of your and the other’s voice. Stop look and listen is focus, see, and hear in the present moment, the now. This is a simple unambiguous phrase that brings you into mindfulness.
It is a simple way to interrupt habit-reactive firing of behavior. This method slows down your reactive-linking behavior. Through present moment refocusing of your attention you can gather information and then develop a response that meets the present moment situation.
This recovery process can be applied to any habit that has gone awry. What’s really great about this set of actions and behaviors is how they help in every instance when a habit has simply overtaken your life as the driver of your behavior rather than the mechanism of your comfort or alleviation of difficulty.
Here’s how to decipher if you are dealing with a habit reaction pattern.
Check in with your senses and intuition. If you feel that the experience is familiar or a pattern then you may be participating in a habit reaction scenario. If you feel that you have trouble trusting that things can/will go well for you, then your early history of having to survive is coloring your current day choices/actions.
If you have an immediate feeling of anger, like someone has crossed a boundary and your feeling is charged in that the level of emotion (intensity) doesn’t match the situation or boundary crossing, this is a sign that you have been triggered.
In this instance, proceed in your actions with thoughtfulness.
Query yourself on whether your intense feeling is consistent with your overall experience of the person or the environment toward which you are feeling the intense reaction.
Stop, look, and listen – think caution in proceeding.
Invoke mindfulness and centered, present moment attention to the situation.
Work against the pull of the groove into the habit reaction pattern.
This is how you can engage the a more balanced attitude. Focus is the key. If you are in danger, utilizing your reaction skills to get out of the situation is paramount. If you are not in danger but rather caught in a habit reaction pattern then focus your attention on what you want rather than what you fear as the best response.
Use mindfulness to re-view the circumstances in relation to your emotion. This is the stop, look, and listen component, it will help you identify whether this is danger or not. In example, if a stranger is doing something that feels dangerous allow your survivor reactions to move at lightning pace. If however, the situation is with a loving partner, or friend – you need to view your emotion within the context of the relationship in present-time and with clarity and genuineness.
Awareness, Breathe, Wait it out, and Reveal.
The most difficult element of confronting a habit reaction pattern that is driving your behavior is the stopping part.
If your car is out of control, you need to stop its forward movement – this requires first, a recognition that you have lost control of the car, and then second, an action to gain control.
This awareness is key. Once you are aware you can begin to take back control of your thinking and behaving/actions.
Stop look and listen focuses you on increasing your awareness. Breathe, wait it out, and reveal focuses you on how and what to change. It requires a shift in how, and on what, you focus. It requires a re-view of yourself through a centered, mindful attention to yourself, your skills and limitations, what brings you joy and centers you in your best self.
Shifting perspective actually creates the power that you feel you have lost. It is a relaxation of the struggle to survive or fight and a gentle movement into the mindful, balanced living of life. Consider the simple action of relaxing in a hold, this action alone telegraphs to the holder to lighten his grip and causes laxity so that you can wiggle out of the stranglehold.
Lightening your grip, your need for habit reactive linking behavior allows you to move through situations and your environment in a mindful and relaxed way, still nimble in your attention and responses to act if necessary to a dangerous situation but not reactive, held or tight in your nature. in love and light, beth
Having worked for many years with individuals struggling with various forms of anxiety I have identified a coping mechanism I call habit reaction patterns to manage anxiety.
This is a coping strategy that starts out creating a sense of control over their internal anxiety. The individual will describe that indeed the habit reactive pattern in some way saved her from an extraordinarily stressful situation or circumstance. Unfortunately this anxiety management method produces a false sense of security and overtime the habit reaction pattern serves to drive the individual’s overall behavior and results in a diminished sense of empowerment and a lack of security.
Habits are highly desirable to create structure in a meaningful way. When a habit degrades into a habit reaction pattern it becomes undesirable . Habit reaction patterns lack present moment authenticity. These are reactive in nature, a set of unconscious, unthinking, unchallenged, automatic reactions.
The patterning pulls you into a specific way of behaving. Think of how the groove of a rut pulls you around a circle. It takes an extra exertion of energy to jump out of the rut and choose your course. The habit reaction pattern acts like the groove or furrow, it takes you into the behavior Habit like any reaction in an automatic, non-present-moment-thinking-way (unconscious).
This reaction is not responsive to the present moment situation, it happens in a non-intuitive non-mindful way. Habit reaction patterns can be triggered into reaction; where a trigger acts like the groove that pulls a person into a set of interpretations and actions (reactions) to survive, or to solve a historical problem, or quell anxiety.
Tied into the habit reaction pattern is a highly fine tuned trigger-detection mechanism.
This mechanism is super-sensitive to interpreting danger, hyper-vigilant, hyper-reactive.
The trigger may be linked to an earlier situation in which you felt in danger of severe harm.
The experience trips the trigger and then the habit reaction pattern fires into action – forcing you to behave in a specific way – even when you cognitively feel you do not want to or feel it is inappropriate.
When this set of feelings happen, the habit reaction pattern is now driving your behavior rather than your proactive spiritual-cognitive-behavior processes. You are no longer in the driver seat of your life. It is as if you are simply watching from behind a glass window, rather than responding to the specific, dynamic multi-level issues at hand. You feel powerless to stop yourself from reacting in the manner prescribed by the habit reaction pattern.
In order to get out of the rut, groove, or habit reaction one has to invoke two things, awareness and allowance. This allows for a sense of present moment empowerment and mindfulness.
The habit reaction pattern behavior may have been highly effective when you first developed it. In fact it may be the best thing you could have done to respond to the original anxiety conflict that set of the patterning habit. This makes it difficult for you to let it go.
You may feel like it is the thing that sets you apart in some way or gives you an edge in some way. This internal feeling creates an attachment to that style of being in the world, such that confronting the need to eradicate the ineffective habit reaction pattern may be thwarted. This sets up a difficult and challenging cycle, you continually, automatically, invoke the original survival mechanism without awareness that you are actually diminishing your power through the reactive mechanism.
The most healing thing to do is
to accurately identify how the patterning was beneficial
to accurately identify that the habit is ineffective in your present moment situation and management of anxiety
to place the behavior into your past as a once successful, but not currently successful pattern of reacting to anxiety
and disassemble the coping strategy and its automatic reactive power.
Habits are developed through a series of trial and error. A need arises, a behavior appears to resolve the identified problem and viola a habit develops. This is an excellent mechanism of comfort and structure or meaning-making in action. It is a part of how we develop, learn and integrate, structure behavior. It’s highly effective model to make sense out of the competing needs in society.
When this mechanism goes awry. The insidious quality of a habit overtaking as driver of your behavior is subtle.
First, there is a sense of invention,
then a settling-in of success in using the habit to resolve a conflict.
After a time the habit begins to drive the situation. The action becomes an automatic reaction of if this then that.
Once this internal directive becomes hardwired the habit drives the set of responses available to you in a given situation, so it becomes a reaction, like the jerking of your knee when hit by the doctor’s mallet – kick straight out. This automatic reaction creates a hardwire rut that drives your behavior.
Any awareness process can assist you in getting out of a habit reactive pattern coping strategy toward anxiety.
Mindful meditation,
the practice of Yoga,
Journaling,
are all excellent practices to increase centering, present moment focus, and balanced neutral response to anxiety.
Use the stop look and listen method to increase your awareness.Once you have developed awareness, use the breathe, wait it out, and reveal process to increase your tolerance for allowance.
These two together, awareness and allowance, create space to respond effectively to your anxiety and change your behavior from ineffective habit reactions to mindful responsiveness. You will move from a need for control and a sense of insecurity to self-confidence and a sense of inner empowerment and strength. More on this is the next few blogs, in love and light, beth.
Injuries heal through a set of layers and this occurs most fully and rapidly through these five steps. The most important step being cleaning out the deterrents to healing.
Here using a focus on physical wounds:
Evaluation of severity, depth, breadth, need for sutures, casting and bandaging.
Cleaning the wound of fragments, foreign objects, dirt, and deterrents to healing – debridement.
Careful observation and compassionate tending to the healing progress of the wound.
Re-evaluation of the development in healing, re-cleaning, debridement, re-dressing the wound.
A loving compassionate reintroduction of the use of the wounded area to avoid re-injury or trauma
The course for wound healing seems to take one of two branches. One branch leads to further, deeper injury through infection and invasion into deeper systems. The other offers a fuller evaluation at the fore to prevent a deeper infestation.
It is seductive to follow the first branch described – it is less work at the beginning and looks as if healing happens more quickly. However this route results in a quick fix. The rapid scabbing process covers a deeper problem that can result in an underlying infection and a resulting scar that stares-out at each person who passes, almost calling the passers-by to comment, and in some cases re-injuring the person.
The second route is more intensive at the front-end, however, once through the difficult evaluation and debridement process, and with proper attention to the complete healing process, this route results in an almost imperceptible scar.
Wound healing takes this same branched course for physical and psychological scars.
For psychological wounds forgiveness is an intricate component of the healing process. The forgiveness has to be sincere, real, felt deeply, and thoroughly experienced. From that whole-space, forgiveness can create an inner healing that results in an imperceptible scar.
and 2. are interrelated for psychological injuries. This is to say the process of evaluation of the injury, and the debridement work together – debridement is the process of removing foreign material and dead tissue from a physical wound to prevent infection and promote healing – debridement, then, with respect to a psychological wound requires mindfully releasing anger, vengefulness, and hate – and utilizes compassion, lovingkindness, and forgiveness.
A short-cut through the forgiveness stage results in an incomplete healing, a superficial covering. This is when an individual chooses to transect the process without looking mindfully at the wounding experience. This is a false covering-over, which allows for infection – underneath a festering will develop at an unconscious or conscious level which will interfere with a full healing of the wound. This may result in deeper injury to spirit, mind and body or ultimately burst open in rage, shame and vengefulness, creating a crater of a scar that is seen in all your relationships.
If you use the tangible concept of a physical wound to guide you,
you can see the first thing required is to clean the wound…get out the dirt, the left over shards so that the wound is ready to create a healing scab. This washing process can sting, be painful, sharp, or uncomfortable.
From a psychological wound perspective the first step is the same,
clean out the wound, remove shards, that are going to impede healing or increase a chance for infection – this requires compassionate understanding and forgiveness, mindfulness, and paradigm shifting. Wounds are often a result of a lack of understanding, a lack of restraint, or a placement of trust toward an untrustworthy person. Going within to do the inner work required for this can be hurtful, sharp, or uncomfortable just like washing out a cut stings.
Forgiveness is tricky when you perceive that forgiveness makes the action that was harmful “okay”. The trick to forgiveness is shifting paradigmatic perceptions and righting your own power in a given situation. Forgiveness is letting go of the power the wounding has over you while simultaneously identifying what was harmful and what to avoid in the future – including the relationship or event in which the wounding occurred.
A common style of dealing with hurts is to remove yourself from the profound feelings that are attached to the pain you endured. This keeps you stuck in the past. This disallows forgiveness or creates unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness leads to a diminishing of your personal power, a rigid world-view, and a truncated personality in relationship. It leads to the opposite of mindfulness and the opposite of empowerment.
In order to forgive, that pain must be felt
and then a resolution, an understanding, a paradigm shift needs to take place to allow the unlinking of the pain of the event; the event and the actor; and the outcome of the event
so that it can be put into proper perspective and into your past,
freeing you to move on into the present moment of your life – a new stance in the world, strengthened via the complete healing of the wound.
To forgive another a deeply painful act, betrayal, or action is difficult. To see, and accept responsibility for, how you have hurt another is also difficult.
Choosing to face this difficult task will allow for a real shift to take place, a full and complete healing that leaves an imperceptible scar, the mindful/spirit-filled inner search (evaluation and debridement) is paramount. This action can result in transforming events, healing your wound and transforming your relationships.
How do you forgive someone for that act which in your mind changed you forever, that betrayed your trust or your sense of innocence?
Finding forgiveness requires grace. It requires a willingness to let go of the thing that may define your stance in the world. It is fraught with deep feeling and an inner journey to your center. Certainly paradigm shifting, figure/ground perspective, and the attitude of gratitude are helpful activities. This set of actions is required to fully heal a psychological wound.
Mindfulness allows you to see a way to unlink the act and the person; the act and the circumstances surrounding the act; and the intention and the action. And from this space forgiveness is possible and profoundly healing.
Severe wounds are difficult betrayals and experiences to transcend, difficult to get to forgiveness even with these unlinkings, increased awareness and increased perspective. The process of debridement is most useful in this situation.
Healing your psychological wounds requires loving attention and compassion first toward yourself and then toward the cause of the wound. Not unlike the treatment of a physical wound what matters is the healing of the injury and then release of anger, and vengefulness toward the cause of the wound.
Healing is me-first. Not narcissistic or selfish but inner directed, looking inward to promote inner healing and release of the power of the wound over your future life choices. This is true for physical and psychological wounds. Allowing an injury to define you sets power where it does not belong. Set your empowerment within, release the material that interferes with your full and complete healing so that the injury itself becomes imperceptible.in love and light, beth
Hello and Welcome! Many years ago a book called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz was released. It spoke to me. I thought it was a must-have for everyone I knew. It had this simple message to live with integrity and to live in a way that centers internally, harmony with your inner knowing, speech and actions. I felt the simplicity was perfect and that it was written with clarity to guide anyone who chose to read it toward a centered, existentially responsible style of living.
The agreements he wrote about are simply:
Be Impeccable with your Word
Don’t Take anything Personally
Don’t Make Assumptions
Always Do your Best
It was my holiday gift that year to every one of my family members, and all the people that mattered to me. I wanted to share this truth with everyone, because I thought it would assist them in upleveling their consciousness. I felt it held information that would unlock the prisons in which people lived.
I was a younger therapist then – enthusiastic, earnest, passionate – I really wanted to make a difference and change the world. I gave this book in this way with heartfelt love, and a deep desire to help. I thought it held a treasure worth more than a typical holiday gift because it offered freedom and a deep inner peace.
I am pretty sure none of these important people in my life read that book, at least not that year. For whatever reason it wasn’t the time for that kind of transformation then.
This had been the story of my life, for many years; I could see the way but what spoke to me so clearly did not always speak to others.
Over the years I have had unusual success as a therapist through my neutral clarity, and compassionate communications. Those who have chosen to seek my guidance have discovered a wealth of effective, compassionate, and life-changing counsel. Recently, I have noticed that those in my inner circle are too experiencing the positive effect of my writing and guidance… this is a sweet gift to witness the positive growth and happiness of those I deeply love.
Reference to the four agreements are also on the rise in spiritual teachings, in Yoga articles, and other pieces on spiritual growth. Perhaps the time is now, for a more comprehensive alignment to take place. I noticed in these references that there is a new book which identifies a new agreement:
5. Be skeptical, but learn to listen.
So apt for the capping to the first four – it aligns the focus even further within, it allows for a deeper inner review and a consolidated expression of love, acceptance, mindfulness, and responsibility for knowledge, speech and action.
For me these simple statements refocus power and energy within; they are the opposite of projection and divisiveness.
These four agreements, plus one, are an easy way to center yourself and focus your energy where you actual have power, in the here and now and within yourself. The energy behind these agreements is to shift your focus and awareness inward, with integrity in speech and action, while through self-love and compassionate action toward others you can increase your mindfulness.
Here is a lovely site about this work and more information about how to use these four agreements to guide your life, http://www.toltecspirit.com/.
And remember be skeptical – listen with your inner ear and through your internal sensory guidance system of five plus one senses, seeing in 4-D. In this way you will be inthe driver’s seat of your life and creating precisely what you want and consciously mean to create. in love and light, beth
Listening is an active process. It is active in that it requires focused attention and neutral or accurate interpretation.
Hearing is a function of this process of focused, unattached listening. Meaning is the by-product – it is what you hear.
When you listen fresh, and without attachment, you free yourself to hear the meaning sent versus your internal negative dialogue or grandiose spin on either the speaker or your self perceptions.
What you hear reveals information about yourself when you hear through the filter of this inner dialogue.
In addition when information is heard through this inner dialogue filter, what another hears you say has more to do with him than with you.
There are levels of information sent in communication. This can be clarified and understood in context when your own filter is removed.
Knowledge is not an inaccurate filter. So that placing the message sent within the context of the sender allows you to accurately interpret the sender’s meaning.
The personal filter through which you hear can interfere with your capacity to do this, your capacity to be neutral.
Fears, misperceptions about yourself such as insecurities or historical relationship information that do not apply to the current relationship are all filters which will interfere with accurate hearing, and will result in inefficient meaning making.
Follow these steps to create clarity and move yourself into a neutral posture for active listening.
Be open to clarity. Clarify what you heard – Repeat what you heard including the hidden message, and request if that was the message sent.
Be neutral – face your inner fears, inner insecurities, and inner mis-perceived paradigms or pictures by questioning yourself about their veracity.
Utilize an integrated listening and hearing system – integrated spirit, mind, and body. Do this by paying attention to what you feel, sense, and experience when listening to the message. Does the information feel right in your heart, does it cognitively go in straight, do you have a physical catch or block to the information?.
Your spirit, mind, and body sensory guidance system guides you to the truth – it cuts through the internal negative or grandiose dialogue and allows truth to be revealed instantly when you are willing to actively listen and remain mindful and present. This is a type of listening with your third or inner ear. It is a hearing, feeling, knowing experience. It is multidimensional in that you know it in your mindfulness or unattached cognitions (understanding), feel it in your body (a sense of flow and ease) and hear it in your heart (a sense of ringing true).
Being present, connecting to listening, and the information, in a present-moment way that incorporates what you know (but discards insecurities, historical patterning in your relationships, and what you fear) is listening without attachment.
This uplevels your consciousness, truth is revealed and you may take action from an enlightening and powerful place to create relationships and environments that are prosperous. in love and light, beth
Having a long history in the study of human behavior I am intimately aware of the strong urge and pull toward following the group. Simply observing toddlers in preschool, young children in elementary school or witnessing the popular movement of music, clothing, and behavior of high school and young adulthood results in the observation that the in-group in society telegraphs to the human psyche how to be, what to think, who to follow and what will keep you in the clique.
This is built into the developmental structure of humans.
This draw to follow the group mind and to be inculcated into belief systems is the basis of societal strength. Unfortunately it can become the downfall of society over time and can become a tool to control people without their overt knowledge.
In the 1960’s psychologists studied university students to discover if an individual will follow the group and conform under various conditions. It was called the Asch Experiment (Wikipedia). And what they found was that when students were presented with a group of peers who offered the incorrect response they conformed to answer with the incorrect answer 75% of the time for at least one answer.
Also in the 1960’s psychologists studied whether a person would act against his or her own inner sense that something was wrong when told by an authority person or person in a position of power that it was necessary to act in this way against that subject’s inner sense that something was wrong. This was called the Milgram Experiment (Wikipedia). This study’s results provided serious information that seemingly “good people” with reasonable skills to evaluate the serious negative effects of an act would still follow through with causing harm to another person when told by an authority person (person in a position of power) that it was necessary and deferred responses to the effects of their actions.
The best way to avoid this is to use critical thinking in all of your decision-making. Critical thinking questions the basis of your belief systems and the underpinnings of powerful people’s opinions and positions. Rather then saying I agree with that icon, hero, politician, or cool person, critical thinking encourages an inner dialogue that questions why do I agree and what does that statement, philosophy, or belief system mean down and up-stream. This increases an individual’s chance to be congruent in his beliefs and it increases the specific individual freedom and empowerment that person can experience in his life course and development.
What is popular is not always what is best for a society. How those in power get their message out is a through subtle coercion. All groups have rules of inclusion and exclusion. The human goal is to feel included, liked, accepted and specifically to be part of the cool in-group.
A great tool is to pay attention when you feel you are being pulled along a flow toward something as if it is the only answer and that feeling is a pressure from the outside, cool in-group, not from an internal sense of knowing from within. This is a cue that you are caught up in something that may have propaganda in it.
When individuals become overly stressed or lack critical thinking they accept propaganda as truth, swallowing it whole. This is a shortcut due to stress or due to an unearned trust toward the group or those in power, thinking thay are indeed going to direct the society to the society as a whole‘s best interest.
Sociological theory and psychological theory, both, have shown that under various conditions those in power want to maintain that power. Power is the means to make money. The place wherein there is little critical thinking with respect to how groups are using propaganda to promote their money-making opportunities is through marketing, media, and what is cool.
The best response to your environment is to use your own critical thinking skills to evaluate the truth of what is being said. Examine how you know it is true, without accepting whole what someone says whom you perceive as a guru, leader, hero, or cool person.
There is power in being famous, this is related to the latent pull to follow the leader of the group. Following what a famous person says or does gives your psyche the sense that you are somehow connected to them, which feeds that hidden inner pull to conform and align with the group.
This is precisely the process that allows for odd or different children to be bullied in school. The cool person or the person perceived to have power, is followed, rather than an individual standing up and saying that it is wrong, or simply standing with the odd or different child. The latent quiet allowing of maltreatment for fear that the maltreatment may be directed at yourself is a way the in-group wields control.
There is a small set of individuals who choose to go outside of the norm. Sometimes this is someone who is following his inner sense of what is right. This small set of individuals can stem the flow of the propaganda. There is risk to this individual as he is often attacked. The first response of a powerful in-group toward this individual is to focus a spotlight on this set of individuals, to discredit them, and to divide and conquer the opportunity for like-minded people to collaborate or simply dialogue about other ways to behave.
Your critical thinking skills can best guide you. And the more you use these and model to your child their use, the more your child will use these. It is in this way that bullying, subtle power coercion, control through group-mind, and propaganda will be extinguished.
Innovation is a natural by-product of critical thinking. It comes as a result of questioning:
is that statement true?
how do I know the belief or statement is true from my own experience?
and what is the other side’s argument and how is it true?
what might be the reward for the person in power to deny the truth?
what is wrong with a statement or belief?
or what needs to be changed in a situation or environment?
Critical thinking is mindfulness.
The force through which someone states a thing is not truth. Truth is. And truth can be felt as an internal alignment – not in the agreement to the belief – but in an integration of the truth of all the positions and how that truth lines up. It is an internal heart sense and has a lightness to it not a loud booming voice. The latter is just a technique of coercion. The more punch and loudness in the argument the less critical thinking.
Critical thinking allows for the truth of all the sides to be accepted and incorporated into the solution or belief system.
Subjectivity is loud, forceful, emotional, and pulls to accept, it blocks mindfulness and the critical evaluation of all sides.
Objectivity is quiet, light, and non-emotional, it has an opening to reveal the truth of all sides.
Discover your truth through critical thinking and mindfulness. Model this behavior and thinking style for your children. This will result in bringing to light propaganda so that real solutions can be found to the difficult problems facing you.in love and light, beth
Hello and Welcome! Creating a new vision requires you have a sense of what you want. This is a challenge if you have spent a lot of your life either swallowing whole what you determined other’s wanted for you or reacting against the image you perceive they wanted for you by doing/being the opposite. Both lifestyles are without an internal connection to yourself. Visioning is an active rather than passive (swallowing whole) or reactive (oppositional) process.
It starts within. The trouble with focusing inward is there is no guide, no perfect step by step process that promises success. It is a feel/know experience.
If you were one of the lucky people, who were modeled this activity by your parents (or grandparents) then you are in luck; you are familiar with what it feels like to trust your intuition and go with the internal flow. Everyone else has to learn how to let go, release, allow, trust and go within to get acquainted with self. In order to develop a connection to self, to your inner guidance you need to develop your allowing muscles.
These processes develop your allowing muscle. Practicing some form of meditation, prayer, Toning, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or Yoga allows for you to develop the integrated structure of breath and spirit to that mind/body movement, and the aha experiences of see/feel/knowing. School, and general socialization patterning develops your working, focusing, and making things happen muscles – these are only mind/body integrated. This integration patterning is useful in many ways, but is limited to movement within already formed structures, and already formed visions.
Visioning requires integration of spirit, and breathing to develop the allowing muscles. These guide you through your heart center and allow your mind/body to integrate with spirit thereby strengthening you as a vehicle of profound creation.
Being a vehicle of profound creation means allowing your pure self to blossom and develop into your full potential and joy. This active process moves your through all aspects of your life and relationships such that you can create precisely what you want and what you create integrates with your community for success.
Start today.
Breathe.
Check into your heart center, are you happy?
Do you bring the same joy to washing the floor as buying that new _____ (fill in the blank)?
With every action have an internal dialogue of self-love and mindful connection. The attitude of gratitude is great for getting you into that heart center.
Look underneath whatever ill feeling you have, tip the issue on its head you will find something for which you are grateful. Use that as your single point of focus and joy will erupt through you and be transmitted through your actions.
~ie: I hate washing the floor…shift to I am grateful to have this home, to have the ability, strength and opportunity to be able to wash the floor…whatever is underneath the chore...
~ie: I hate fighting with my child… shift to I am grateful to have the child, what may be going on underneath these fights – from there you can look for ways to align with your child to be on the same side against the problem…. whatever is underneath the conflict – you will find something to be grateful for…
~ie: I hate that everyone always pulls on me… shift to I am grateful to have so many people who love and depend on me… from there you can look to see how to shift the degree of dependency so that you can have more space for yourself…
Gratitude, Joy, and connection these are the feeling experiences that bring you into your center and integrate the allowing muscles, listening to your inner sense of pure love, joy, and gratitude, so that you can vision anew how and who you want to be in the world. This will affect every one of your interactions and actions.
Obligation is a mind/body integrated muscle, it isolates and separates you. Action through love, and joy includes spirit into that muscle to allow your actions to uncover a new vision and connection with yourself and your community. in gratitude, joy, and love, beth
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