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Do You Recognize This Block To Living A Truly Great Life?
Have you ever thought that positive thinking or creative imagination really doesn’t work? That it’s all a bunch of malarky because you tried it once and nothing happened. Maybe you tried to imagine something great a couple of times or even a bunch of times and it made not a jot of difference in your life.
You’re probably right. It doesn’t work, but not because it doesn’t work, it’s because of the way we’re working it.
You sit down once a day and escape to that wonderful place in your head. Your dream life. Your dream vacation. Your dream relationship. Your dream anything. And the minute your visualization or imaginal vision, call it what you will, is over, with a deep sigh you return to the hubub and chaos and maybe unhappiness of your day.
Your real life beckons and it bears no resemblance to the dream you just left behind. Once again you’re caught up in the less than dreamlike reality of your current life experience.
It’s discouraging, dispiriting and all together not what you want at all. It feels terrible. There’s such a huge gap between where you are and where you dream of being. Fulfilling your desires seems a million miles away.
So you pepper your thoughts with:
This doesn’t work.
I’m no good at it.
Why do I bother, good things never happen for me anyway.
Life is what it is.
Facts are facts.
It’s all magical thinking.
Hard work and sacrifice is what it takes to get ahead, nothing is easy.
And now you’re making a less than perfect day worse. Plus, you’ve just undone all the creative wonder that you set in motion not ten minutes ago. You’ve moved back into the state of dwelling on what’s wrong with your life and not what’s right with it.
This is the challenge. This is what trips us up every time. It’s the old, perpetual construction deferred occupancy, syndrome.
States of consciousness, to appear as a solid reality in our life need more than a flying visit. We can’t just dip our toe in the waters of desire and expect total immersion.
Everything in our world is brought into being by stable imaginal activities even those we’re unconscious of and they remain as our life experience as long as we maintain this stable activity.
Ideally we create new beliefs for our sub-conscious to accept. We create beliefs about who we choose to be and how we choose to experience life, because once accepted, we’ll have events and conditions and people show up to reflect these beliefs. Then before you know it, they become part of our nature, part of who we are, and we won’t have to put in any effort to make it so.
Anyone want to say no to effortless living?
Didn’t think so.
We live in the very heart of creation, our imagination, and yet we manage to be forgetful of the power that’s ours because we’re overwhelmed by the endless tsunami of facts, totally oblivious to the knowledge that the current conditions of life, the current facts we experience, are simply products of our imagination.
Imagination will conserve, keeping our current life in place, or transform, creating our new destiny, according to our thoughts and feelings. But it can’t be transformative if we’re hopping from state to state like little busy bunnies.
We need to be able to integrate our dream life with the life we currently lead. Which means we need to have our thoughts stem, not from our past experiences, or the barrage of facts that stare us in the face today, but from the new state of consciousness. We need to stop dipping our toe in it and then falling back into our old negative habits of thought, we need to be immersed in our new state. We need to have stability in our imaginal acts.
Change your perspective and see life through new eyes.
Instead of:
This doesn’t work.
[success] Faith is a higher faculty than reason. ~ Henry Christopher Bailey[/success]
I’m no good at it.
[success] Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. ~ Henry Ward Beecher[/success]
Why do I bother, good things never happen for me anyway.
[success] My mind is a centre of Divine operation. ~ Thomas Troward[/success]
Life is what it is.
[success] Faith is an invisible and invincible magnet, and attracts to itself whatever it fervently desires and calmly and persistently expects. ~ Ralph W. Trine[/success]
Facts are facts.
[success] Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see. ~ William Newton Clarke[/success]
It’s all magical thinking.
[success] Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. ~ St. Augustine[/success]
Hard work and sacrifice is what it takes to get ahead, nothing is easy.
– And yet, with God all things are possible.
[success] The highest revelation is that God is in every man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson[/success]
So that’s the secret, if we would but be committed to the feeling of our wish fulfilled, in faith that this will become a reality, then it must be and it will be, because imagining creates reality.
We don’t imagine what we want and then drop all thoughts of it as we revert back to our old habit of thinking. We need to carry our ideal, our dream life, around with us and hold it lightly, as we would a fragile flower, so its fragrance will float around us all of the day.
Encourage one another.
Love Elle
xoxo
Photo credits
mrhayata
So true Elle, and of course it takes time to change “what is”. Most of us need to put some work ( time spent ) in before we can change our reality. Sustained positive thinking coupled with action can work miracles; it has for me.
Thanks,
Dan Garner
http://Zenpresence.com
Thanks Dan for your thoughtful comment…you are so right about time. It’s no different than gardening really, we have seed time and harvest. How wonderful that you’ve experienced miracles…I’m a big believer in them. 🙂
Hi Elle,
Love this inspirational post. Imagery can be so helpful in moving us forward to feel comfortable in the new role that we hope to have. Fear can hold us back, as it can feel easier to stay in our comfort zone than to try something new. I love this quote – “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
Thanks for sharing as always. Take care.
Hello Cathy, and that’s a great point about imagery helping us feel comfortable in our new state of being. It’s an extra bonus to the whole practice. Thank you so much for sharing it. 🙂
Elle,
I loved your post – so many great points. I especially loved this: States of consciousness, to appear as a solid reality in our life need more than a flying visit.
So true. You have to hold your vision of reality steady.
I say – hold your vision of the reality you wish to manifest before you like a carrot. And, keep walking toward it until you step right into your new reality!
Great post!
xxoo,
Angela
Welcome Angela, just like Cathy, you’ve given me an extra way of seeing how beneficial using our imagination really is. We just keep walking towards that carrot. Great stuff. Thank you for stopping by and adding so much to the conversation. 🙂
It’s easy to give in when the “answers” don’t come immediately…stick with it or change your angle or both. Thanks for this.
be good to yourself
David
“Stick with it – or change your angle” another great way to help change our experiences. Thanks David. 🙂
BEAUTIFUL and powerful Elle!
Love the end of this post with the thought and counter thought. That’s such a strong illustration of how we can really deeply change our thoughts through a point of view change.
And love how you point out how people can unknowingly negate or cancel out the positive work they put in with visualization:
“And now you’re making a less than perfect day worse. Plus, you’ve just undone all the creative wonder that you set in motion not ten minutes ago. “
Hi Aileen, so glad to have you back. And thank you for your kind words…so encouraging. 🙂
Beautiful post with many wonderful quotes. I especially like your own words of “Change your perspective and see life through new eyes”. And I love the quotes about faith.
Thank you!!
And thank you Betsy for taking the time out of your day that I know is so busy. I’m happy you enjoyed the post – it was great being able to use all those wonderful quotes! 🙂
Elle,
Where do I begin? Your blog constantly helps me re-focus, get those smarky voices in the background out the door and to remind myself that my life is as I dream it.
I will be spending time with the Achuar tribe in Ecuador ~ they are a dream society. I can only imagine what is going to happen. I’m ready!xxxoo-Fran
Fran I’m so thrilled for you…what an amazing experience…what an amazing reflection of you who are. And what a wonderful dream you’re about to experience. As we say across the pond, good job you! 🙂
Hmm, I do find myself having the thought that the projects I’m working on will be painful and involve a lot of hard work, and I find myself almost perversely gravitating toward them for that reason, because that way I can prove that I’m a hard worker. It’s an interesting dynamic to notice.
What a great catch Chris. Without the awareness of what’s being reflected to us, we have no power of choice. Once we see, we get to choose if a belief or habit serves us well. If not we get to change it. If it’s helpful, whatever it is, we can choose to keep it. Kudos to see. Awareness is such a great step. 🙂
Hello, dear Elle 🙂 remember me? I haven’t written to you in a long time, but I am reading your posts and finding encouragement in them all the time, so again, thank you so much. Over the past year I realized just how powerful this stuff is, and every time a miracle happens in my life, I just want to cry happy tears, and I do 🙂 I now have new love in my life, new job, and the next dream is renting an apartment by the river with my loved one. I imagined everything about it, the location, the feeling, the balcony, the view, the river, the sunrise, every little thing, and I wrote it down and gave it to him to read on his trip he had to take (he loved it and he said he felt like he was there already). A few days later the apartment in that very place appeared in the adds, and even the rent is just what I expected. I just wanted ti cry, I couldn’t sleep that night. I told you about the nasty stuff that I went through the year before, and now it sometimes seems just to good to be true, and that is my block. Why do I still think I don’t deserve to have all my dreams come true? That sounds like a case for Sherlock Holmes! 🙂 But I know I am the only one who can solve it really. But you see, I never experienced this kind of happiness before, and sometimes I forget that the Universe isn’t lurking around the corner waiting for me to relax so that it can crumble down on me and destroy me when I least expect it. The last couple of days I have been caught in that sort of thinking, and it hasn’t done me any good. And here it is, just what I needed, a reminder from you about how things work, about letting go and just believing. Thank you for being there whenever I need encouragement.
Hello Ana dear…how lovely to hear from you again. And what wonderful manifestations you’ve experienced…you must be occupying a lovely state of mind.
Funny isn’t it how our old habits of thought can sometimes creep up on us. And good for you that you caught them. Knowing there is no outside cause sitting, waiting, to give us anything, good or not, is very liberating isn’t it? We know we’re simply experiencing our consciousness.
Congratulations kiddo on being in a marvelous state of consciousness. I know that others are helped by your life story and I thank you. 🙂