Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Replacing the Negative with the Positive

Tags

Changing the Script, Focus, Gratitude, Gratitude Journal, Negative, Positive, spirituality

“If you fill your consciousness with the positive aspects of Divine Spirit, there is no vacuum where the negative may enter.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Do you have any bad habits you’d like to rid yourself of? I was thinking about this, this morning as I searched for a quote for today’s article and this one is right on spot. If you’ve ever looked into Neuro-linguistic programming, you are probably aware of some aspects of the brain that are interesting, to say the least. One of these interesting aspects is the brain’s inability to distinguish between don’t and do. If you say you don’t want to smoke anymore, your brain captures smoking. If you say you won’t get angry at stupid things anymore, your brain captures angry. It is interesting and true.

So how do you rewire your brain to break a bad habit? You fill it with a replacement. If you focus on health, exercise, or any other positive trait, you will slowly drain energy from the neural pathway that was created to automate the bad habit you are trying to get rid of. The key is to continuously fill your consciousness with positive aspects. By doing so, you will starve the automatic neural pathways that coincide with your bad habits and they will dissipate. I know. It’s harder than just filling your mind with positive things. It takes a concerted effort.

It is possible, however. If you begin to realize how your brain automates things—truly see your brain go through this process, it is easier to unravel. It is like witnessing your brain go through the steps that are necessary to do something, say something, or feel something. There is a natural progression of steps your brain goes through for everything you do in a given day. These steps are automated, so you really have to pay attention and watch what your brain does. Once you witness your brain traveling down the road of a bad habit, it will naturally fade away. This awareness is hard to capture but once you do, there is no way you will continue to do something that hurts you.

I have found that doing meditation helps me with this process. When you have developed the ability to watch your breath and ignore everything else physically, it is easy to rise above the thought stream. For those of you who have conquered the “monkey mind”, you know what this feels like. You imagine your thoughts as a steady stream. When you rise above that stream, you are no longer bothered by your thoughts—you are above them! This same process can be used to observe your unconscious mind. The unconscious part of you is where all your good and bad automated processes are located. Let me explain.

When you first learned to drive a car, you had to think about every single step of driving. It was painstaking, nerve-wracking, and exhausting. Over time, you became proficient with driving. Your brain “automated” driving. Once your driving became unconscious, driving was simple. You get in the care, put your foot on the brake, turn the key in the ignition, put your car into gear and off you go. It was seamless from beginning to the end.

You also have unconscious processes for being angry, being jealous, being frightened, being happy, and so on. The unconscious mind becomes visible once your active mind settles down. You can begin to witness different parts of your body. You can begin to witness your thoughts and how they come about. When you truly see the inner wiring of a habit and see how harmful it is, it is much easier to change the wiring, or what the late Stephen Covey calls “rewriting the script”.

To get back to the quote for today’s article, you just must observe your negative inner wiring with positive wiring. It is simply keeping your attention on the positive things in life and letting the negative things fade away. Don’t get me wrong. There will always be things that get under your skin. The key is to minimize the duration you stay in this negative state. Pout or have a tantrum, cry, scream, and then, LET IT GO.

One of the ways I remain in a positive state of mind is by keeping a gratitude journal. Each morning I write down all the things I am grateful for. I don’t hold myself to a time limit or a set number of statements. I just keep writing until I get that feeling. A feeling that everything is ok, everything is going well, and a deep satisfaction that all is well. I have enough; I have great things to look forward to, and everything is exactly as it should be.

Try this technique. Gratitude journaling is really enjoyable once you get the hang of it and spend the time to truly appreciate all you have in your life. If you need some help or some ideas about how to create a gratitude journal, simply do a Google search on gratitude journaling and you’ll find all kinds of articles on the topic.

I hope all of you have a great Saturday.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Self-discipline

Tags

Balance, Harold Klemp, Holy Spirit, Key Areas, Love, passion, Self-discipline, spirituality

Self-discipline is an absolute necessity if one is to have a productive spiritual life. Replace old tastes and preferences with new, better ones. But do it in the name of the Holy Spirit, with love and a sincere heart, or nothing will come of this experiment.

—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Self-discipline is nothing more than doing what you agree to do. These agreements can be about your exercise routine, your diet, planning your day, and any other topic you can think of that requires effort. A person who can evaluate themselves and come up with a game plan to improve weaknesses or bolster their strengths are powerful people. They can do anything because they are willing to commit and stick with it.

Change is difficult. Evaluating yourself is difficult. Holding yourself to a new standard is also difficult. Self-discipline enables these and more.

So many people just ramble through life. They occupy their time with meaningless activities with no forethought. Think about all the people who literally live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or Pinterest. What are they accomplishing?

Are you happy with your life? If so, change nothing. Keep doing what you are doing. It’s your life. If you’re happy and fulfilled, why change anything. This article is for the rest of us that are not happy with our current circumstances. We want to lose weight, get in better shape, eat better, and build skills that will garner us the ability to make an income throughout our lives.

Where do you start? This is probably the hardest thing to do—decide. We only have so many hours in the day. What will you spend your time on? Do you want to write a book, start a blog, or create poetry? Do you want to learn a new language? Do you want to start an exercise program? Do you want to start a business? What other things can you do each day that will contribute and build?

I started my search online. I wanted to know what I could do to improve my life, make lasting change, and build skills that would provide me with an income as I pursue a third career. I chose specific areas of my life to look at. These areas are Physical (eating right, getting enough sleep, and exercise), Mental (reading and learning every day), Social (staying connected with friends and family and make new friends and connections), and Spiritual (daily meditation, religious readings, attending spiritual events and retreats).

The areas I want to learn are two-fold. Write books (nonfiction and fiction) and learn how to write computer programs. Once I began my investigation into these areas, I found all kinds of resources to help me on my quest. These are now daily habits that I dedicate my time to. I write every day for this blog and work on my books. I also code every day. I have made great strides in both areas because I do a little each day to add to my abilities.

I need a little discipline in these areas because I love both. I love writing and I love coding. They are closely related because a programming language has rules and a whole new language to learn to enable my code to work. Book writing is a combination of actual writing every day and learning the craft. I try to read a writing book daily and find courses online that can teach me the various aspects of writing whether these classes are on grammar, style, or the specifics of writing a book. There are books on plot development, world building, and character development. The learning never ceases.

What are your passions? What would you like to do with the rest of your life when you retire? Do you want to keep working? Do you want multiple streams of income? Take time on a weekend and think about some of these things. Once you have discovered what you’d like to do, add that to your day. Do a little on these areas each day. How long does exercise need to be to be a benefit? How much writing do you want to do each day? What can you fit into your schedule after your workday is done and you’ve attended to your home responsibilities?

When you start out, put in a half-hour or so to each thing you’d like to try. I would recommend grabbing one item you’d like to add to your day. Then, once you’ve solidified your newfound habit, add another and another, until you are hitting all the things you want to pursue. You’ll be amazed how many things you can do by chipping away a little at a time.

Well, folks. I hope you are having a great Saturday! Enjoy your weekend. If anyone is interested, comment on this thread. I am more than happy to give you some ideas to help you move forward.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Acting As If

Tags

Acting as-if, Deleting, Distorting, Generalizing, Internal filtering, internal map, spirituality, Visualization

“A person who has a high degree of spiritual unfoldment will be balanced in his everyday life. He will use common sense and common courtesy with the people around him.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

What is spiritual unfoldment? The easiest way to explain it is to use the analogy of a map. Initially, we start with a folded-up map. We see some map but miss the details that are in it. As we unfold the map, we see more of the surrounding territory and have a better view of how to move to the places we want to go. The more unfoldment we gain, the higher and more detailed our map becomes. When our internal map improves it gets us closer to the true terrain. This truth, once we recognize it, helps us live our lives better.

I find the topics of psychology and cognition fascinating. Over the years I have discovered that each of us use our own map to negotiate life. Some parts of the map are like other people’s maps. Some parts are not. These maps are unique to us. As we move through life, our maps change to adapt. I recently learned about filters. These filters do three things. They distort, generalize, and delete. These filters are necessary because they help us interact. Imagine having to relearn common, everyday tasks like walking to the mailbox, going out to eat, and anything else you can think of. This automatic filtering saves time and energy.

The downside to these internal filters is what they do with inputs we receive through the senses. Let’s say you have a bad boss and you are traumatized by your interactions with him or her. The part of your filter that generalizes could generalize that all bosses are bad. This causes us to “expect” to have bad bosses. If this auto filtering becomes strong enough in our internal wiring, you will delete or distort anything that differs with your belief that all bosses are bad.

Our beliefs are powerful. They are hard to circumvent or change because of the internal map we possess and the filters we used to analyze new information. We can change, however. We can short-circuit this cybernetic loop by changing our behavior or our beliefs. The beliefs we should target are called “limiting beliefs”. Limiting beliefs are those beliefs that cause us to doubt something or make it appear unsafe. Beliefs like “no one will love me”, “I’m horrible with money”, or “I can’t find a job” are all examples. How do you change these limited beliefs? One way is to behave differently. Act as if. Acting as if is like making pretend. We pretend we can do something we think we can’t. Since the mind can’t tell the difference between what it perceives and what it imagines, it can be fooled into believing that it can do something it couldn’t do before. This is quite a revelation, right?

I’ll leave you with this thought. You can change whatever you want if you can act your way into believing it. Once you believe something, your auto filtering system will do the rest.

Have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Higher You Are, The More You Can See

Tags

Emotional, habits, Intellect, Intuition, memory, Physical, Ruts, spirituality

“As Soul, you are like a balloon that rises above the ground. The higher you go, the farther you can see. And the farther you can see, the better you can plan your life.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Have you ever observed other people’s lives? Have you ever wondered about the friends you have, the job you ended up with, or the situation you find yourself in? All of us are here to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn from others. We learn how to do new things.

I notice patterns. I have always possessed an innate ability to recognize patterns and processes within various systems. I notice patterns in other people’s lives. Patterns that help them and patterns that hurt them. The patterns that hurt are self-destructive. Patterns like excuse making. Patterns such as blaming other people or outside circumstances. Patterns of apathy that contribute to a person giving up, accepting their lot in life and doing nothing to improve their circumstances.

If you pay attention, you can uncover destructive habits in yourself too. When I think about or observe myself, I take the view from the real me—soul. Soul is the real you. It is not the ego or your mind. It is that part of you that can view the things you think about. When you can stand back and look at your life or the lives of others, you can see what’s wrong and make changes. You can break down “you” by understanding that each part composes multiple levels of consciousness.

We have the physical or lowest level. This is the part of you that gets hungry, tired, and horny. Next you have the emotional part of you. The part of you that gets scared, bored, angry, fearful, and lustful. Beyond the emotions is the memory part. The memory contains your past and highlights key events in your life you have learned from. Beyond the memory is the intellect. This part of you represents your ability to think, analyze, and learn. Soul decides on a course of action by using memories and other environmental inputs. Finally, you have the intuition. This is the part of you that gives you little hints or ideas when you are trying to solve a problem or decide after you have analyzed all the things your mental part of you is thinking about or learning.

At the top of all of this is Soul. Soul is the real you. Soul uses these lower parts of you to interact in each sphere of existence. Soul is infinite. Soul can rise above these lower parts to glimpse the whole. When you act at the soul level, you can make better decisions because soul sees the entire picture of you. Soul can also explore beyond you. It can go places your lower parts cannot. When you get an impression or idea, this comes from Soul. Soul can warn you before you make a mistake. Soul can show an idea that might help you solve a problem. This is the analogy of the quote at the top of this posting. The higher soul goes the more it can see.

You can also limit yourself. Have you ever gotten so mad you cannot think? This is when soul has activated your emotions and focuses its attention on this part of you. Soul blinds itself to any higher faculty. When Soul focuses on the past, the same thing occurs. Soul is so entertained by the past it can’t think or analyze new ideas. Instead of rising above these lower parts of you to see the whole, it entertains itself by these lower parts, and restricts itself from the higher view it is capable of.

This leads me back to the statement I made in the initial few paragraphs. People become occupied with one part of themselves and get stuck. Soul gets stuck in the physical, emotional, memory, or mental realms. This prevents soul from seeing all there is to see and prevents soul from providing the ideas or advice these people need. They get caught in an automatic loop that the lowest part of them used for survival. Bad habits rule over them.

Your brain builds habits. It builds neural pathways to perpetuate actions that repeat. The brain does this to conserve energy. This system is automatic. We can exploit this process for good when you recognize a harmful neural pathway or habit. The only way to determine the advantage or disadvantage of any habit is to measure the results a habit produces. How do we do this? We take the time to analyze ourselves. If something we do is destructive, we can identify the specific actions we take and change them.

Changing or altering your habits is difficult. The neural pathways that compose our habits are as strong as steel cables. The longer you have acted out a habit the stronger it will be. Undoing a harmful habit can take as many years to undo as it took to build. Be persistent. Remember the harm this habit causes.

Need outside help? No problem. Research. Look for books, websites, blogs, and research articles that address this problem. You’ll find that there are many people that have run across the same problem and broke their harmful habits. Record as many ideas as you can. Try each one until you find the solution that works. Engage with other people on social media that have had the same problem. Ask them questions. Most will be happy to help you out. In fact, it is highly likely they got help from others the same way.

Remember who and what you are. You are soul. You are not your brain, your emotions, your memories, your intellect, or your intuition. You are above these individual facets.

Until next time.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Focusing on the Good

Tags

Focus, Goals, Gratitude, habits, Meditation, spirituality, Thoughts

“Thoughts are things, and it is important to keep our thoughts of a spiritual nature, to put attention on living a life that is a clear step toward growth.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

One of the many benefits of meditation is the ability to focus. We concentrate on our breath or do a body scan. Whenever our attention drifts away from the breath, we gently return to the it. Each day is different, but the process is the same. The daily practice is one that trains the mind to stay where it is, to truly focus the mind on one thing. If you can keep the mind focused on your breath, an object, or a chant, the rest of your reality will fade away.

The calming effects of meditation work well because of this focus. The mind fights it initially by going this way and that, bringing up a torrent of thoughts that appear out of nowhere. Over time, one can rise above the thought stream and just observe. This new state is quite tranquil. Spending as little as 10 minutes in this state brings one to place of peace and calm that will last for the rest of your day.

The practice of meditating trains the mind and allows the real you to begin observing the thoughts that are most beneficial to you. As the quote above says, “Thoughts are things…” They can bring good things to your life and they can bring bad things. As you observe your thoughts, you can discriminate between the good and bad thoughts in your thought stream and only give life to those thoughts that are helpful and serving. The practice of sifting through your thoughts as they float by is a good habit to get into. It takes time to develop the skill, but it will become habit if you focus your efforts on this.

One of the best ways to begin is to formulate your goals. Each goal will require effort on your part and will require your attention each day. If you set a few goals, you’ll have quite a few daily actions that have to be accomplished in order to move yourself toward the goals you have set. These actions can be set to your calendar, a to-do app, or even a hand-written daily planner. Then, as long as you stick to the daily actions you have set up, you will begin to have more good things to focus your mind on throughout the day. This focus on your daily actions and the productive mindset that ensues are the exact combination that will keep your mind focused on productive, good thoughts, and help you avoid bad thoughts—thoughts that will get you into trouble.

If your life is just not going the way you’d like, try some of my suggestions mentioned here. They work. Your mind likes to create things. A mind that is focused on good things will produce more good things. A mind that is focused on good and bad things will produce good and bad things. A mind that is focused on bad things will produce bad things. You are more powerful than you realize.

Stay focused on the good things in life. Express gratitude for even the smallest thing in your life that delivers joy. If you can keep your mind focused on the good, your life will turn around to the good. You are the only one that can do this. I wish you well on your journey.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Consistency, Exercise, Learning, motivation, Patience, perseverence, Persistence, Skills, spirituality

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walter_elliot_190719?src=t_motivational

Want to learn a secret? Here’s a secret that will change your life.

You will accomplish whatever you set out to do if you do not quit trying to accomplish it.

I don’t care if you are trying to lose weight, stop smoking, read more, write more, learn more. Say you want to learn a new language. Learning a new language is hard. Quitting a bad habit is hard. Learning how to do something you’ve never done before is hard.

Learn incrementally and continuously. Take a little bit of new information, study it, read it, do something with it in little bite-size chunks on a daily basis and before you know it you’ll own that new knowledge. You’ll build the skill. The challenge with this type of learning is consistency. You have to keep doing it over and over and over and never stop. You must really want the new knowledge or skill.

If you keep pushing forward, keep digging in consistently, keep pushing the envelope, you’ll see some dramatic results over time. Stick with it and you’ll achieve your goal over time. It’s really that simple.

Here’s what I’m up to this week:

• I’m leading a Book discussion class on Past lives, dreams, and Soul travel today at a local library
• I’m still sick but doing some home workouts to get back into my routine of daily exercise
• I’ve read 2 books of the 48 I am goaled for and currently reading 5 books simultaneously. Each month I’m tackling 4 books—one fiction book, one history book, one book on philosophy, and one on self-help. Currently I’m reading book 2 of the 2136 series, book on Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, Unit 731 – Japanese biological warfare unit in WWII, and The One Thing.
• I’m finalizing the initial rough draft of my technical recruiting book.
• I am working through a basic JavaScript programming course on Codecademy.
• I just wrapped up a course on WWII that was offered for free by Hillsdale College (hillsdale.edu).
• I’m watching a course offered by Dr. Jordan Peterson on Personality and transformation on YouTube. He currently teaches at the University of Toronto. All his courses are available on his YouTube channel. The current lecture series is composed of 20 lectures spanning between an hour and two hours each. It is time-consuming but interesting.
• I’m starting to brainstorm my own YouTube channel. I am still thinking about what I would like to do with this. This is probably something I’ll investigate next year but will begin putting together a plan for this by the end of this year.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope all of you are keep pushing forward with your goals.

Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Experience, Personality, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, spirituality, Uniqueness

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Found at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/pierre_teilhard_de_chardi_160888?src=t_spiritual

Have you ever thought about how different each of us is from one another? We all interpret the world differently. We all experience things differently. These experiences add the ways we interpret and react to the world.

Who are we? Are we this body that will run down and die? Are we the mind that will degrade and lose its elasticity? What makes our personality unique?

I am not going to inject my opinion here. Instead, I’ll just give you something to ponder for the rest of the weekend, should you choose to do so. The clue is in the quote above.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Buddha, Contemplation, Meditation, Prayer, Religion, spirituality

Image Credit: www.brainyquote.com

Regardless of your religious or even non-religious stance, it is one of the critical pieces of our lives. Today is a day to contemplate your relationship with God, the Universe, or whatever you consider beyond yourself. Perhaps philosophical concepts are divine to you.

I am an Eckist (see www.eckankar.org). This has been my religious path since childhood. Like most believers, it is a joy each day to go into contemplation (meditation or prayer are equivalents) and give my love to God. It is a joy to give thanks for the things I have in my life.

The path back to God is a long and hard journey but it is a journey worth taking. Those of us in Eckankar believe that we reincarnate over and over and over again to perfect Soul. Soul is the true “us”. The body we use currently is only for Soul’s use, not the other way around. As Soul learns it becomes more Godlike. It never becomes God. It becomes more refined and grows in awareness. This awareness provides Soul with better insights. These insights allow Soul to avoid past mistakes and this, in turn, allows us to live a better life.

Ultimately, we discover that Soul’s purpose is to continue to learn better ways of giving and receiving love—to be a channel for God’s love, wherever we are. The more we give, the more we get.

Whatever path you follow, give it reverence. Learn the religious books, practice the tenets of these scriptures. Dedicate yourself to improve in conjunction with the teaching your path provides. There is no greater pursuit than God.

I hope each of you is having a terrific weekend so far.

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Buddha Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 6, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/buddha_121766

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Brainstorming, Exercise, Persistence, Reading, reflection, spirituality, Thomas Edison, Writing

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison

Happy October!!

Here we are again at the beginning of a new week. I use Sundays to reflect on my life, reflect on the weekly goals I set the week before, and examine all my projects to determine where I am at and what I have left to do.

I realize where I made progress, realize where I messed up, and think about new ideas to move my projects and goals forward. I do what many call a weekly review. This allows me to look at my calendar, my mail, my email, my project lists, my to-do lists, my bucket lists, anything that I have some interest in. This one day a week I label my “do nothing day” but this is a misnomer. I really do things on Sunday but do less than I normally would and use the day to re-charge, re-focus, and restart stalled projects.

I think this is what Edison is driving at. If we learn that something we are doing isn’t working—we re-tool. We try again. If we realize we haven’t been doing this or that—we re-tool. We try again. If we catch some inefficiencies, we can re-work the game plan we have for a goal or project. We can try again.

If you are stuck, not motivated, and frustrated, take some time on Saturday or Sunday and re-think what you are doing. You’ll get new ideas, you’ll see potential opportunities to try something different, you’ll find avenues to travel you haven’t been down yet. Try them, explore them, take them.

This week:

Still plugging away at the Kris Gethin 4-week-to-shred workout. Still plugging away at my books and working through a 7-week course on Coursera. I’ll also be working on my non-fiction book. Spiritually, I’ll be meditating daily and reading my Bible and other spiritual works.

Have a great week everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Thomas A. Edison Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_149049

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Gratitude, Looking for the Good, Saturday, Self-acceptance, Self-love, spirituality, Weekend

“Begin with the love you have. Love gratefully. This love expands your heart into a greater vessel which can hold yet more love.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

All of us are probably the worst self-critics. I know I am. Did you ever have a conversation with yourself that involve the statements “you should”, “you missed”, or you “screwed up”? The conversations about not being good enough, not looking right, or some other self-inflicted attack?

Give yourself a break. Embrace the failure. The more we realize how mistakes are a part of success and getting things done, the more we will be apt to tackle projects that are big, hairy, and scary. Get yourself out there, write down the things you want to do before you leave this Earth (Bucket List), and start doing them. I think you’ll be amazed by your results.

Love yourself.

The more you can accept and love yourself, the more you’ll be able to accept and love others. It all starts and ends with you.

Challenge:

When you wake up tomorrow, start your day by saying something nice to yourself. Start your day counting your blessings. Try this for the upcoming week. I think you, like me, will be surprised by the results, the change in your demeanor, the change in your mood.

Seriously, give this a shot.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Until next time…

Dave