Using Daily Affirmations

Self-affirmations are often touted as a way to deal with negativity in life, as well as change how you view yourself, and in certain situations they’re effective. However, by themselves they’re not of much use if you don’t address the underlying beliefs that cause negativity in the first place. Deleting negative thoughts only stops them for the moment; they’re going to keep coming back until you change how you perceive the world, and more importantly, how you perceive yourself.

How do you change what you believe? You have to find out what that is first. Keeping a daily journal is a good start; writing down your thoughts on a regular basis can present a very clear picture of what you think not only about yourself, but about others, as well. A month’s worth of daily entries can be very revealing about what you believe, and provide a baseline from which to address beliefs you don’t like.

You can also ask people you trust and love to tell you what they honestly think of you. The people we love are usually a good source of feedback. After all, they reflect both our best and our worst qualities; that’s why we have them in our lives to begin with. Use them as a tool to learn how they view you, and from there to gain a better understanding of yourself.

You don’t actually have to talk to anyone if you’re not comfortable with the idea. Just hanging out with friends or family, and observing how you interrelate, will tell you plenty about yourself. Do you take to others easily, or do you often find them challenging? Are you loving, accepting, and gracious? Or are you judgmental, argumentative, or opinionated, even just in your own thoughts? The latter are all signs of someone uncomfortable with their self, and suggest a need to reinforce one’s beliefs by attacking the beliefs of others, or defending one’s own.

When we live in fear, we’ll go to great lengths to prove to ourselves that we’re ‘right’ about one thing or another, when in fact we’re running from our own self-doubt. The truth has no need of protection; finding our own truths means no longer running from ourselves, or others. You can discover from your dealings with people, including acquaintances or total strangers, how you view yourself.

All of these methods are meant to be self-revealing. In fact, you’re sending messages about your beliefs to yourself all the time, with everything you think, say or do. Just spend some time observing your own reactions to life; if you don’t like what you see, then maybe it’s time to change what you believe.

Keeping a checklist of your good points and bad points is also an aid to help you keep track of what you want to change, and from there learning which beliefs you hold that do not reflect the person you want to become. If you’re serious about changing who you are, you’ll need to be disciplined enough to do something serious about it. That means sticking to a method of uncovering your truths, and making a real effort to change.

How do you change? This is where affirmations find their best usage. Once you’re aware of the beliefs you want to change, you can focus much more clearly on who you want to become. You can change the habits of a lifetime’s wrong thinking by realizing when you’re stuck in it, and altering how you react accordingly. When you catch yourself reacting to life like you always have, stop and respond with whom you want to be, instead; that’s the key to using daily affirmations.

Bear in mind that since it’s taken a lifetime to become the person you are, becoming someone you’re happier being won’t happen overnight. It takes time, action, and effort to create a new you. Freedom from negativity can only occur when you put your mind to ridding yourself of your own negative beliefs, and focus on creating more positive beliefs to replace them.

This is what self-awareness is all about; learning the truth of who you are, and leaving who you’re not behind. As you grow in awareness of the true nature of the self, the mind begins to shift to reflect the truth of your existence, and the world you perceive becomes enriched with more promise and joy as a result.

We’re all on journeys of growth, and there is only movement forward, no matter how our lives may appear to us from one moment to another. However, there’s a difference between being aware of our progress, and wallowing in the self-despair or self-doubt that characterizes a person under the influence of ego alone. Recognize the events that happen in your life as positive movers of change, and change who you are as a result of your increased awareness of their meaning.

Personal Boundaries

Many a self-help manual suggest that setting boundaries to protect oneself against people deemed “unhealthy” presences in our lives is a positive, healthy step towards creating a positive, healthier you. Sometimes, the suggestion is accompanied by advice such as ensuring you're vibrating at the right frequency to attract only the people you want to your life. Or, you’re told to stand up for what you believe in by addressing it with those closest to you, and ensuring that they know what you will or will not tolerate from them. This may alienate people, however; it may be wiser to earn their respect by setting an example for them to follow by your acceptance of them, and why they're in your life, rather than dictate to them the terms by which they’re allowed to be in it, or not.

Setting boundaries does nothing to address the issues a person has with their beliefs about themselves, which is the basis for finding ourselves faced with challenging people to begin with. It has the opposite effect of keeping a person’s personal issues from being addressed at all. Why would a person ever worry about the behaviour of others unless they were worried about their own?

This is the crux of the matter. There is no need to set boundaries to protect ourselves from the actions or influence of people we find “unhealthy” or otherwise challenging. Setting boundaries does not keep anything or anyone out of our lives; it only keeps us hiding from seeing the truth about ourselves.

No matter the depth of our self-awareness, our higher selves present us with challenges throughout our lives in order for us to learn and grow. When we don’t rise to meet those challenges, we continue to get them until we do. The messages behind them can get more intense the more we ignore them, and sometimes result in serious repercussions to our well-being. This is not because our higher selves want to harm us; it’s because we're hiding from ourselves, and creating unconscious (and sometimes conscious) guilt as a result of our refusal to change our beliefs. Guilt is the most pernicious, pervasive emotion we can harbour, and when we do we can manifest all kinds of punishment on ourselves, as well as on others.

The irony of setting boundaries in our interactions with others is that we’re really setting boundaries against our own growth when we do it. Whatever it is were supposed to learn from a particular person that we find challenging to deal with will simply surface in another person at another place and time until we have received whatever message we’re trying to tell ourselves. Setting boundaries with the goal of preserving our truths in fact limits us from seeing them in the first place.

It’s inevitable that we’ll meet people who challenge us to examine our beliefs about ourselves, and give us an opportunity to grow. The people we find the most challenging to accept are the ones we learn the most about ourselves from; they’re mirrors reflecting some aspect of our beliefs that needs addressing. After all, we cannot set boundaries against everyone, and expect to win wisdom or greater self-awareness by closing ourselves off from the world behind walls of fear. We needn’t worry about attracting people into our lives who don't serve our growth if we’re doing what is needed to preserve the path of it ourselves. The opposite is true; the more we examine and alter our beliefs to reflect our inner truths, the more we’ll attract people into our lives who also reflect those truths.

If we learn from our encounters with people who challenge us, we'll eventually find those challenges disappear of their own accord, because we have moved beyond needing them, and will no longer attract whatever it is they were meant to teach us. It’s that simple. As we grow in acceptance of who we are and the truths we represent, we no longer need fear anyone. Setting boundaries is a mark of living in fear, not courageously protecting the truth. The truth needs no protection; it needs only acceptance in order to see the light of day.

Challenges come from our inner selves; they have nothing to do with anyone else. We create them for ourselves, and rather than shut them out behind boundaries of insecurity, we should embrace and learn from them, so we need not experience the same challenges over and over again. This is the path we need to take to change our beliefs to reflect our truths, and to find greater peace in our lives. Face the fears you have about yourself, and your need to hide from yourself will fade away.

Awareness 101

If the universe and everything in it is a projection of the mind, then everything apparently outside of the mind is unreal. There are mind-blowing implications that result from accepting this concept. For one, it means that life as we perceive it through the senses is only being thought of in the mind, and thus everything we feel is also in the mind. This also means that nothing at all is actually happening except in the mind.

In addition to this, while every mind experiences what it chooses to of life, one of the reasons we tend to perceive the same external, physical reality is because there is only one mind. There is no other explanation possible for our shared experience outside of how we react to what happens in it. Nevertheless, even if the world we see is a similar projection among us all, how we experience it is entirely based on beliefs about the self. These beliefs are the basis for our emotions, and the various ways we proceed through life that we use to describe ourselves as individuals.

Yet, if nothing is actually happening in our so-called external reality, than what are we experiencing? We’re experiencing whatever the mind chooses to create for us, and given that the mind must then exist as a conscious entity outside of our external perception, the mind is not in space or time; it’s in thought.

Now consider that if the mind is in thought, then not only is nothing happening in a physical sense, but nothing is happening outside of thought itself. This raises the question: Why do we appear to be ‘somewhere’ in space and time, if the mind creating us isn’t?

This is where the argument requires a leap of faith in an unified, creative source that represents the one mind of which we are all a part. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called; God, the all-seeing, all-knowing mastermind, the Source; if there is only one mind, then it can only be comprehended through the mind itself, and not through the senses.

This is the reason increasing self-awareness is important. It’s the one route to discovering that the difference between existing solely in the illusion of an external reality, and existing solely in the truth of an internal awareness, is strictly a matter of belief. Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, Shangri-La; all represent a state of mind, and achieving it is why we have faith in the first place.

Something in our thoughts constantly reminds us that there is more to what we see in life. We not only tend to want to believe it, most of just accept it as true. Why do we have this strong drive to believe in something beyond external perception? It’s not because we want to live forever; it’s because we already do, and we’re trying to remember the fact.

Reality as experienced by the body is a dream of the mind. Were our minds fully aware, we would immediately recognize that we are already in heaven, or nirvana, or any place you care to name that symbolizes not only the afterlife, but the mind’s spiritual origin, as well. The true reality is that we have never left where the mind is; we only think we have.

One aspect of increasing self-awareness is understanding how to return to full acceptance of the mind’s reality, and in so doing wake up to the truth of our existence. How we approach achieving that will be the subject of another post.

Ego vs. Spirit

If the Universe is a projection of the mind, then what is the nature of our existence, and how do we perceive it? First, it helps to understand that perception is a result of what’s going on in the mind, and not of anything that appears to be outside of it. There isn’t any distinction to be made between thoughts and external stimuli; they’re the same thing. What we perceive of the world seemingly outside of the self is created by the mind. If that seems dubious, consider that in a dream state the eyes are generally closed, yet a dream is still ‘seen’. That’s because it’s the mind doing the seeing, not the eyes. The same thing is happening during periods of wakefulness - eyes are not receptors for seeing what’s separate from the self - they’re projectors for seeing what’s inside of it.

It’s taken for granted that the mind interprets what the senses perceive, but the truth is subtler. Yes, the mind chooses what to sense, but it’s already decided what that will be before its sensed anything. In other words, projecting as well as interpreting so-called external stimuli is strictly a matter of choice; all perception is created with the mind. What’s created and how that’s understood depends on beliefs about life, and about the self. Where do the projected stimuli come from? From the two sources of beliefs: the ego self, which comprises most conscious thinking, as well as all unconscious fears; and the spirit self, the part of the mind that guides behaviour based on love, morals, and individual truth.

Both belief systems are within the same mind, but they differ greatly in their goals. Ego is intent on having us envision a world of struggle, dissatisfaction, and disharmony, a place where we must fight to master our fate, only to perish after all the effort. In marked contrast, spirit wants us to grow in awareness, see the true nature of existence, and accept the immortality of the self.

Why immortal? There’s plenty of evidence that people do transcend physical existence, even though they may still appear to be in it. Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, and many others provide examples that the body is but a result of the mind’s awareness, and therefore only the mind exists. These were people who fully grasped the concept of a single, unified consciousness, and were able to exist in the mind of the spirit alone. Ego disappears when unconscious beliefs are corrected to reflect the belief system of the spirit self, and fear ceases to be a driving force of thought or behaviour.

How do we interpret truth from everything else? Anything not of God (my choice of metaphor for the One Self, or unified consciousness), or in other words, not created with love, is unreal. God is incapable of creating anything outside of love or truth, since God is the spiritual embodiment of both. Thus, anything that is seen as less than loving or truthful is illusion, since God cannot have created it in the first place. This is something of a leap of faith for many people, but as most of us have some belief in a higher power, it’s not difficult to conceive. It may be difficult to accept, but that’s up to individual experience, and the beliefs of the self to decide upon.

Believing in God or a unified consciousness isn’t a prerequisite to understanding the illusory nature of so-called physical reality; modern science has other explanations for the same concept. For example, it’s common knowledge that all energy is composed of atoms, and that matter is energy transformed. It’s also been proven that atoms are not always fixed in place; they zip into and out of planes of existence regularly. The upshot of this is that everything apparently physical is in a constant state of flux. This makes perfect sense when you consider that the power of creative thought, which is responsible for the transformation of energy into form, is also continually in a state of flux. Nothing is as it seems other than beliefs determine it be one thing or another, and even then nothing remains permanently one thing or another. Everything is changing all the time.

If a person could see only the atomic structure of the physical world, all form would disappear; only energy would be present. This alone is proof that physical reality is not in fact ‘real’ at all, and only exists because the beliefs of the mind sustain it. Change one’s beliefs, and ‘reality’ changes to mirror them.

If beliefs dictate what we experience of the ‘physical’ world, how do we choose which ones serve us best? You only need examine the way your life is going to answer that question. Are you constantly wishing things were different? Do you want things you cannot have? Do you look for happiness to come from others? Do you get upset when others don’t meet your expectations? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you’re following the beliefs of the ego self. The world seems like a place of mishaps, pain and emotional drama.

Conversely, if you’re happy, accept yourself and others easily, give to receive, and understand that love really does make the world go around, then you’re likely experiencing life from the belief system of the spirit self. Life is joyous, supportive, enriching, and rewarding.

The choice you make to follow the limiting dictates of ego, or focus on the greater awareness of spirit, determines the life you create, and reflects the beliefs of either self. Listen to your heart, and you’ll know which one will serve you best.