Affirmations

I had a lot of cynical affirmations going on all the time in my head earlier so I didn’t see much use for affirmations at all. I think a lot of people are like I was, in that we often seem to doubt so many things in life. The magic seems to come to an end somewhere in childhood when we learn that our parents are not the ideals we held them to be when we were just babies. Soon after that the list of those who we do not doubt starts to really shrink until finally we become total cynics. We have learned that we are to be doubted somewhere in this period too. That saves us from jumping off buildings and touching things that are burning, of course, because we have learned how vulnerable we are in spite of the fact that we enjoy imagining a character like Superman who only has one weakness. We and everybody else seem to have so many.

The reason I say these thoughts and internal dialogues are affirmations are because everything we say or think is an affirmation as I now understand. I have Louise Hay to thank for helping me to understand about that. Before I learned about that from her I was a tense person who had a lot of trouble sleeping or even relaxing. With affirmations in conjunction with a little Neuro-linguistic Programming and some Ho ‘oponoopono I now enjoy a good night’s sleep and am able to nap and otherwise relax whenever I want.

Rest is important of course, so we must get enough of it to keep our bodies healthy and our minds clear. But what I now realize is that we also need something to believe in again to relieve us from the burden of all this cynicism. I’m not saying that flaws are not real nor am I saying that they should be ignored - they just don’t need to be our focus in life. What we need is “that thing with feathers” the hope that Emily Dickenson so famously refers to with that line so frequently quoted. If I tell myself that we are all flawed it is like saying there is no hope. If I tell myself that “Life is for me” as Louise Hay and others say, then I can look forward to the next moment without any trace of cynical dread.

The implication is that, as I mentioned earlier, I relish a good night’s sleep and the pleasure of waking up refreshed in the morning ready for the day. You have all heard that saying about the condemned man eating a hearty meal. The reason why people say that is because it would be so surprising. If I were about to be executed, I’m not sure I would have much of an appetite and that is precisely the point. If we keep telling ourselves that there is no hope to be found in the moments ahead our appetite, our sleep, and our health finally are the victims of all this condemnation.

Fortunately thoughts that give us no hope are only one kind of thinking. All thoughts are affirmations and we can also affirm hopeful things as an alternative. When I begin to practice doing so, I not only slept better but all things, including my health became better.

I encourage you to begin your process of positive affirmations, if you haven’t started already and, no matter where you are on this process, I wish you all the best – the possibilities not the negativities are now guiding you into a brighter future.

SILENCE

Silence, this is the thing before and after a knock that helps you to pay attention. Silence is what you hear before you fall asleep. Silence is what you hear when your mind is quiet and it is the ability of silence in adding definition to things that is so important. Are you rich in silence or are you poor? I used to be much poorer in it before I started to learn Russian.

Russian is, of course a difficult language. It has a rather complex grammar structure and the sounds it uses for words are mostly produced in a different part of the mouth then the sounds we use for English. But I didn’t start by learning all about those things. I really wanted to imitate the way people learn languages when they are just babies. Instead of the scholastic approach I have taken all my life I wanted the innocence of knowing what words mean just by the way they sound. What I’m trying to explain is that you can’t learn a new language when you are still listening to (and leaning on) the old one.

Also I didn’t know enough of the language to converse freely. So what I found myself doing was simply sitting and listening as people I was with spoke. I think we learn from our childhood educational experience to participate in class discussions so as to make good impressions on our teachers. That also helps learn to better express ourselves in our country’s language. But what I experienced during the years I was learning Russian was the pleasure of listening.

I listened to the sounds people make to form the words and how the words connected all together to tell stories and anecdotes, as well as to express simpler things. Of course there always comes a time when one must use one’s ability to speak because a spoken language is largely a process of appropriate reactions in my experience. But I still remember those hours spent listening with great fondness. Listening is such a peaceful and pleasant activity!

The truth is that one must listen in order to learn and understand. It is a fundamental part of communication that seems to be so often overlooked these days. Simply put, you cannot understand information you do not hear! Listening (quietly) is the only way to actually hear what others are saying.

I recommend you go to this link and listen to Krishnamurti giving this lecture on meditation at San Diego State in 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW96eZsR710

Enjoy and be grateful for it!

We do the same things over and over again and it just seems so hard to break those chains of habit. We struggle to get ahead but just keep doing the same old things again and again. You would think that those chains would weaken over time like their metal equivalent but they just seem to keep getting stronger.

I was doing this Boo Hoo litany to myself just a little while ago and suddenly realized that the reason these chains of habit get stronger is because they renew with every mindless repetition. So what to do? The obvious answer was to take the “mindless” out of that activity cycle.

I’ve been at this for years now and the things that have helped me are the interventions I have learned to do with Neurolinguistic Programming, Hoʻoponopono, the affirmation process of Louise Hay, Joe Vitale, subliminal affirmations, hypnosis, and the many guided meditations that are available today.

Call it a mid-life crisis or whatever but I remember being at that moment in my life when I knew everything had been the same for too long and some stuff was definitely going to have to change. The trouble was, of course, that everything had just become a habit and that was the moment NLP entered my life. The longest journey starts with the first step so where are you at this moment and what has brought you here. Please share some about your journey and your needs.