Do you sometimes feel that you are powerless in changing your habits, especially those that you’ve had for as long as you can remember and probably don’t even immediately recognize? Like the habit of being defensive? Or judgemental? Or enraged? Or jealous?
And perhaps you might also feel powerless (or at least uninspired) about a personal relationship. Or the plight of the homeless or stateless (refugees) or people who abuse others. Do you find yourself feeling overwhelmed often enough that you eventually avoid even thinking about it?
The infinite power that you have at your service
I want to remind you of the infinite power that you have at your service. It is the power of Love, of Infinite Potential, of Boundless Creative Energy. It is the power that brought you into being, into human form. It is the same power that keeps planets in orbit and neurons firing in your brain. It is a power that you can draw on, or allow to move in a particular direction by being present to it and declaring an intention to see a ‘problem’ clearly and receive a ‘solution’ to it.
In order to be present to it, you must clear up the space in which you hold a situation, a condition, a ‘problem’ in mind. And I’m going to tell you quite simply how you can do this. But first, let’s get one thing straight:
You always have the freedom of choice
Just because something is prevailing (like the state of homelessness) or automatic (like a habit of rage or jealousy), i.e. it kicks in without you even realizing it, doesn’t mean that it is beyond your exercise of choice. It most certainly isn’t. You do have choice over it. And the first step in exercising that choice is to realize that you have it!
By the way, I prefer to use the word ‘choice’ rather than ‘control’ because, whereas ‘control’ suggests to me ‘imposition of force over what is’, ‘choice’ offers me something much more gentle yet firm and intentional, directional yet working with and responsive rather than reactive to what is.
Get present, notice without judging, indulging or resisting
The next step in exercising choice is to be fully aware of and attentive to what is. To do this, you must be willing to suspend your subjective judgements, conclusions, beliefs and feelings toward the matter at hand. Now, this does NOT mean that you will not have these judgements etc. It just means that you will agree to SUSPEND them.
That means, you will acknowledge them and then just let them be. You will not feed them with more thought and feeling which will often take the form of reasons, justifications, accusations, demands and so on. Let them be. Acknowledge them and let them be. By doing this, you will clear the ‘problem space’, thus allowing you to see the matter clearly.
Seeing something clearly is a state of freedom, freedom from all the habitual clutter of thought and emotion. This clarity makes the ‘solution’ or the ‘required (alternative) action’ more visible to you.
Allow spontaneous wisdom and be willing to follow it
Now, ‘visibility’ can take the form of thought, feeling, sensation, image, a gut feeling, a noticeable urge…It will seem to arise from somewhere within you and you will notice that it is not intellectual. Rather, it is intuitive. And because it is intuitive rather than intellectual in its origin, you may find that it defies reason. It may draw or prompt you in ways that seem neither logical nor do-able.
But if you honour it, you will not be sorry. In fact, it is a common experience that when it is not honoured, when the intellect is allowed to override it, when we ignore that ‘gut feeling’, that we do suffer the consequences and live to say “I should have listened to my instincts/gut”.
If, on the other hand, you trust it, the ‘way’, the ‘how’, will also become visible to you. Now, this big or full picture may not be visible to you in its entirety, and it often isn’t, but all you really need is the next step. After all, you can only ever proceed one step at a time. So, even if the entire ‘solution’ or method isn’t clear to you, the next step will be. Trust that, for after you’ve taken it, the next step will become visible. And then the next and the one after that and so on.
Faith means allowing the only Power there is and that we exist by to be in charge
Trust or Faith is essential. Too often, because we lack it, we interfere with the process that has been set in motion – the process that draws the Infinite Power, Intelligence, Potential that I talked about right at the beginning – into action. So, we keep interfering by questioning whether things are really working out. We step in and take over i.e. the Ego or the Conditioned/Habitual mind is allowed to do what it has always done and…nothing changes.
How do you cultivate Faith? With practice. Start with small things, things that you don’t deem to be terribly important, like what you’ll have for lunch or what movie you’d like to watch. Meanwhile, remind yourself of those times in your life when you were pushed to the wall, when there didn’t seem to be any way out, when the situation was so out of your control, and how, ‘if not for the grace of God…’, things might have been disastrous…We have all had such experiences whether or not we believe in a ‘God’.
So, to recap:
- Recognize you have a choice
- Clear your problem space from any clutter by letting your thoughts, beliefs, judgements, attachments, aversions, feelings, opinions…simply be so that you can be fully present to what is and thus see clearly
- Be willing to honour the intuitive nudges and prompts even if they only reveal themselves one step at a time.
- Have Faith.
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