Positive Thinking

True, positive thinking may change some things in your life. Affirmations may train you to use more positive thoughts in your life overall. Have you tried all that positive thinking and are still experiencing less than positive things in your life ? Well, I have. I've been so positive that I felt almost sticky, it was so sugary sweet! It had a taste of "unreal" and just didn't yield the results that I was hoping for. At least not on a deep level. Yes, given, some things turned out better after I had begun thinking positive thoughts, but the underlying essence of my experiences had remained the same. That lead me to believe that "positive thinking" just isn't IT in the nutshell. It's not quite that easy, I'm afraid and of course you could not say: "well, that's your belief and that's how your experience forms." I'd have to agree with you, but not quite in the way you've meant it. I can wholeheartedly have the thorough belief that positive thoughts will alter my life to a more positive experience and still experience things less than stellar. That's probably one of the moments when skeptics donate the books on positive thinking to the library and go on with their lives based on "reality" ...or whatever.... I'm not that way, I see something not working out the way I had understood it should and that turns me into a person with OCD - I will not give up until I found the flaw... and I believe to have found the "flaw" at least for my own life.

There could be a few reasons why my positive thinking didn't yield the desired results:

a) I wasn't thinking strongly enough or positively enough
b) this concept is a bunch of BS and it is not how it works
c) the negativity of the "field" consciousness of the rest of the people is hampering my own creations
d) I may not be conscious of every one of my thoughts/beliefs and thus may miss the bigger picture

I am sure you'd come up with some more reasons...

Anyways, here my short answers

a) i'm pretty focused when I want to be, so strength or level of positivity should not be the problem
b) I've seen this concept of positivity work too often for minor things to know that the concept is sound (probably too sound !)
c) yes, easy way out - blame others ! ... tried that, didn't work ... there is something to be said for mass consciousness, but that's for another post - so for c) yes, in part...but not exclusively...
d) now here lies the problem in my opinion and I am only speaking for myself here. Yes! there may be beliefs that are so deep and ingrained that I am not even aware of them. They may even be imbedded in the DNA - a genetic thing, something that my forebears did, believed and experienced for generations ...

I am not saying that the ancestors are now to be blamed - I generally try not to blame anyone other than myself for my own experience. However, ancestral traits and beliefs can be tricky to deal with and recognize, for they are so deeply set in your make-up of who you are, that you may not feel that they are touchable, let alone changeable. I have broken with ancestral traditions like alcoholism ... after having been an alcoholic for a number of years in my 20s... Therefore I know that certain genetic traits and dispositions can be altered. It is hard work (or so I believe !!!!!) to do that - Yay! caught one - that belief is really common to the Swiss people and I remember my parents uttering such things: It's hard work, but you can do it if you apply yourself!

See, until this very moment, I didn't really know of this particular belief and here it is - I'm looking for it, focusing my attention on finding beliefs that are deeply ingrained and through that intent I open up my perception to actually see one (or a few more...) So, what to do now with that belief. First I let it be - it's here - it's shaped my life in oh so many ways - Yes, I've had to work HARD for these difficult things... I bet if my ancestry had been Italian for example I would have experienced a life of less work and more play. I'm actually pretty certain of that assumption. Of course, I'm now not going to blame a) my parents, b) my other ancestors, c) all Swiss people ... NOR d) myself. I'm skipping that step - hopping right over it - it doesn't matter what caused it, what matters is that I'm seeing it and that's a great feeling.

I let review pass and can see that this belief, which is very ingrained in my being, in my DNA, in every cell of my body has shaped my world and the experiences it provided. Yes, there are feelings of regret that I had to experience hardship that way - silly really to have such a belief when I'm supposed to be able to create my own world. I could think of a few beliefs that would be suitable to replace this one. But before I'm going to just toss this one out and replace it with something else, I want to go see what good this belief has done for me. I can come up with some things like: It provided me with an excellent work ethic (Swiss style!) and has taught me integrity, conscientiousness, sincerity ... and a few more things... not too shabby in my opinion. I think it is very important to see one pivotal gift this belief has provided. Without it, I would never be able to recognize the polar opposite of "EASY"... or "effortless"...something of that sort. I do mean to point out very clearly, that each and every experience, every belief be it the darkest thing you could imagine holds in its energy the potential of the polar opposite. So if I held the belief of "hard", holding the belief of "easy" is in fact effortless ... it's a wee shift in believing -

The beauty of all this is, even if you think it's really hard, even if that's your core belief for many things - the actual shifting is very easy, it comes automatically with the recognition of what is going on, it comes at the moment of "epiphany" or realization - and it's here to stay, unless you prefer the old - Free will choice here.