There are limits to how far a single piece of advice might be of help when it comes to changing life for the better.
This should be fairly self evident, and yet the internet is rife with suggestions like the one that all you need to do to change your life is to change your vibration. The idea that by changing how you think and how you feel then the material world will somehow fall into alignment around you.
The thing is that this is not necessarily wrong or even bad advice. Changing how you think, and being present with your feelings is not bad advice, it’s just that for some people, it’s not enough.
In fact, for some people, for whom the issues are so deep beneath the surface, or so close to their face, such advice may even be harmful.
The trouble is, by implying that your fortune might be changed simply by changing your thoughts and your feelings, you might conclude that if you are unsuccessful, or worse still, a failure, then you might blame yourself.
Again, it is not that the principles are wrong. How we think and how we feel certainly do impact the quality of our lives, and taking responsibility for this can actually be life changing. Without the proper guidance, without really getting to grips with the nuances and the context, then it can do as much harm as good.
If your life is troublesome, if you are living in poverty, diseased, in an abusive relationship, bereft of love, if you believe that this is all the result of how you think and how your feel, then you might just end up believing that you have asked for a prison to be built around you.
What makes this a tricky area is that there is some truth in it.
The issue is though that it is not the whole truth.
Yes, we do have a tendency to attract to ourselves conditions in life that reflect the inner dynamics of our psyches. Sometimes we are conscious of them. Sometimes we are not. Becoming conscious of them can lead us to transcending them and their effects in our lives.
The question is, how do we discern them?
The Question of Change
I have met people from every walk of life who, at some point or another, have attempted to implement shifts in attitude, either to themselves or their surroundings.
I have seen some people excel and some fail.
Those that excel become fuel for the promotion of such principles. The teachers and influencers that promote these ideas and sell techniques to implement them then hold up these people as examples of the credibility of the principles. Those who fail are said to have done so because, either they did not apply the techniques correctly, or they were unable to shift their vibration enough. They become collateral damage; perverse proof that there is an inverse effect at work.
Those people are not only then left in a situation of suffering but blaming themselves for their suffering – “Deep down I must just want this.”
The somewhat stark and painful truth is that some of them will be right.
We do create the circumstances of our lives to a much deeper degree than many of us are consciously aware of. It is clear that there is also bad luck, bad timing, environmental influences that are beyond our control, people who act in mean and brutish ways, and many more circumstances that effect us. We would be fooling ourselves if we were to deny such things and place all responsibility on the individual. That said, as mentioned before, the individual scope for responsibility can sometimes be far greater than the might otherwise realise.
Rather than this being an opportunity to offer further condemnation and blame for failure it might also prove, in the right context, to be a fact that helps to liberate.
Sometimes it is as much about allowing the old thoughts and feeling to leave via the appropriate channels, before new ones can be made.
In many ways it has to do with relating, which is a principle that I return to time and time again, because it forms the foundation of how we exchange information and subsequently how we make choices and act in the world.
If you have tried to implement some of these positive thinking and feeling techniques and failed in the past, it might not be because you are doing it wrong or because YOU want to suffer. Your suffering might be the result of something that is out of alignment that you are not yet perceiving clearly.
For example.
Most people usually want to see improvements in one of three areas in their lives: relationships, finance, and health. Let’s choose finance.
Let’s imagine that you have applied certain positive thinking / positive feeling techniques to the idea of generating money.
You imagine yourself in a nice house with all of the trappings of wealth – maybe you are on a yacht in the Caribbean, or flying on your own private jet. You have been taught to imagine this in the greatest detail and to feel all of the emotions that you anticipate would accompany that reality. This is a fairly basic positive visualisation technique often labelled as the law of attraction. Again, it’s not wrong. It can work – within reason, and there is more to implement too as one must act towards ones goals. However, for someone who, deep down, consciously or unconsciously, does not believe that they are worthy of being wealthy, no amount of visualisation, mentally or emotionally, is going to make even the slightest bit of difference.
If that attempt is in conflict with other unconscious processes then you may well be asking for trouble. Suffice to say, asking the unconscious for guidance and being grateful for how it might lead you towards a more balanced way of living, is one thing. Attempting to imprint upon the unconscious your desire is another.
It is not that they law of attraction is wrong, but it is not the whole picture.
Alasdair Crowley, the infamous English magician, for all of his perceived nefarious qualities, gave fair warning to those seeking to impress their will onto the unconscious when he said that you have to be very clear about what you want before you attempt to do any magic, because you might just find that you get exactly what you ask for.
It is also not wrong to suggest that if and where possible that an individual focus on generating positive emotion as a choice. That you can just choose to be happy, and that when you shift away from being outcome focused and invest in the process of life – to engage with your being – to LIVE creative, then you can see huge changes – significantly positive ones too.
This, combined with gratitude for life, for each moment, can have far reaching effects.
But….
What if you are living in poverty?
What if you seriously have nothing but debt?
What if you have no emotional support?
What if you simply cannot see a practical solution or a way out of your situation. Then what?
The harsh realities of life can easily put pay to such lofty ideals.
Yes, I would argue that you do what you can, but also that there is a critical mass within the psyche, and that sometimes, to overcome that you need external help.
Yes, you need to take responsibility, but we are all parts within complex systems and none of us exist solely in states of isolation.
Yes, we often have more power than we care or even dare to imagine. Sometimes we need the help of others to either remove the blocks that are preventing us from accessing it, or just to have someone walk alongside us for a while to help us set out feet back on the right path again.
If you are seeking assistance or guidance in any of these areas, you are always welcome to talk.
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