Mind and Manifestation: Into the Light

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Brad Hutchinson, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Choose an event that happened to you in real life. If it was a painful event you might still feel some suffering even though the immediate situation has passed. If it was a pleasurable event you may still be reminiscing about it years later. A slap across the face as a child can leave life-long emotional scars. But that same kid that is guided to be stronger by a loving teacher in kung fu can withstand and incredible amount of physical contact.

We learn in the martial arts that our bodies are much more resilient and stronger than we think they are. Suffering comes from recoiling into our own minds taking things personally and replaying them again and again. The event(s) is long gone but we carry it like a shadow. It monopolizes our attention and immobilizes our bodies. Words are worse. If we’re told as a child that we will never amount to anything by an authority figure our lives become much less than they could be. Opportunity comes but we cannot move toward it; often we push it away. Look around your room. What you see in front of you is a result of thoughts you had yesterday, yesteryear.

Thoughts come from two places: the Subconscious and the Conscious. The key is to hold the right thoughts and acknowledge and let go of the harmful ones. Many of us don’t know how to program our minds for success. The use of an analogy or two will give us some direction. Napoleon Hill is responsible for the current trend in positive thinking and is said to have created more millionaires than any body else with his work. His valuable identification in the 1940’s was not the first of this kind. Spiritual literature from all traditions acknowledges the power of right and wrong thoughts for guiding our lives.

Subconscious:

Our subconscious minds record suggestions and images sent from the conscious mind. Think of it as film that records everything that reaches it through the conscious lens. The subconscious does not judge, it accepts and acts on all suggestions, constructive or destructive. Our sense of life springs mostly from the images and words on our subconscious film. The outer action of these images is simply a real life drama partly created by you and partly created by others that have place images and written script on your film. If you are not happy with the way your life is playing out you can change it by simply becoming the sole director of your destiny. This does not mean you should not seek help in your dreams. We all need mentors, teachers, and people to help facilitate our greatness.

You may be thinking right now that there would be no possible way to block out all negative in the world. This is true. You cannot tune out the pain and suffering in the world in the same way you cannot bury pain and suffering within you. How we respond to suffering will greatly affect our self esteem and sense of life.By accepting events, good or bad, as they are and accepting thoughts and feelings that arise from such events is a key to moving from victim to victor. This does not imply a passive approach. It is the difference between responding and reacting.

We can acknowledge that we are in pain and that we are suffering. But we can act constructively by allowing those feelings to surface and then release them. Those feelings are teaching us something about ourselves. What are the lessons? When we touch a hot stove as a child we learn to be careful around stoves. When we are hurt by somebody it gives us an opportunity to grow emotionally and spiritually. It could mean staying away from unhealthy relationships in the future. Maybe by acknowledging that people do the best they can with the programming on their subconscious film that we can let go some of the our pain from childhood. But we have to look at the pain to release it.

When we are afraid to look at the dark parts of ourselves the darkness within gains power, lurking as a shadow filled with shame, embarrassment, doubt, pain. It tricks us in to believing that if we look we will see how horrible and inadequate we really are. Or that the pain will be too much to handle. Like a child who covers her eyes and thinks the person in front of her is gone, we as adults play the same game with our darker side as if it didn’t exist. This is a grand illusion because the only power this darkness has is its own darkness; the only thing that can clear the darkness is casting conscious light on it. If we don’t meet it head on with our light it manifests in negative ways. It can be a difficult abstraction to comprehend. Let’s look to the outside world to give us a better understanding.

This darkness lurks everywhere. As society we cast this energy to the dark recesses of our communities, out of sight. But it lingers there, gaining power and momentum until it can no longer be contained. We don’t want to acknowledge what happens to kids in children’s aid care, we don’t want to see homeless people on our street corners, we are afraid of the mentally ill, we certainly don’t want to acknowledge how prevalent child sexual abuse is. We are all scarred, some more than others. If left in the dark these emotional scars erupt into socially unacceptable behaviours.

Then we cast the guilty off to prison to make us feel safer. The problem is that we’re treating the symptoms not the underlying issues. It is a backwards approach that can only bring about more darkness. There are only so many places we can relegate this energy before it shows up in our communities as violence and abhorrent behaviours. Look around at our schools, places of work, communities. Are jails making our communities safer? The fact is a person jailed for more than three months is 7 times more likely to offend. Safer? With respect to you, this shadow shows up as dis-ease, alcohol-drug-food abuses, and/or treating the people you love poorly. Chances are you don’t wake up in the morning and plan to do and say hurtful things, but how often does your frustration break through to the point where you have regret about what you did or said to your partner, children, coworkers, or strangers? It is easier to cast our darkness on somebody else; it is easier to blame than to take responsibility. What can we do?

“We miraculously heal in the presence of someone who believes in our light even though we are lost in darkness.” —Marianne Williamson (The Shadow Effect pg. 175)

There is a way to shift your paradigms; you can cast out the darkness with light. You can choose to see the light in anybody. You can choose to see capacity. It comes from the understanding changing the world is a bigger job than changing your response to it. Similarly, if you don’t like the image you see in the mirror, you don’t change the mirror.

Laser Eagles

To see this principle in action we will take a look at an organization called Laser Eagles founded by Arthur Lockhart. Laser Eagles is a program in Toronto that facilitates the spiritual transmission of people that are limited in mobility. Some of these people can only move their heads. What Arthur saw was different from what most would see. Instead of seeing what they couldn’t do he looked at these people as tremendously gifted with value to offer. This automatically opened possibilities.

Laser Eagles is a program that takes a laser pointer and straps it to any part of the body that can move. Then a tracker is assigned to that person. He or she records the vision of the artist at the end of a laser beam with a paintbrush. Some of these paintings have been sold for over $500. Many of these artists had never been out of their places of residence before this program was initiated. The trackers are often young people that have some trouble with the law doing community service hours. It is an experience of joy and rejuvenation for both the tracker and the artist; it is a process that looks past the limitations of the body to the limitless soul within. This is a real-life metaphor for all of us. What dream or goal or wish has been immobilized in you from fear, inhibition, doubt, worry…? What if you could find somebody to facilitate that awakening for you? Somebody that focused on the light of ability rather than the shadow of limitation.

From the darkness and into the light Laser Eagles removes the boundaries we place around disabled people and facilitates more happiness to the planet. When viewed from the light of capacity instead of the darkness of incapacity a whole new world opens for us all. It is a paradigm shift that you can use in any area of your life. Read the opening paragraph again from the perspective of capacity. Then look around your room again. Look at your life. What is good?

Humanity seems to be in a grave hour of darkness. All you need to do is open a daily newspaper, turn on the television, or open your computer to prove this is true. Turn off that noise for a moment and listen, listen with your heart. Beyond the clamour there is something magical happening right now in the world. It’s subtle and powerful; so powerful in fact that you can actually feel this energy in the quietude of your spirit. History is catching up with humanity, but not in a bad way as is commonly promoted in the mainstream media. From the enlightened masters and teachers including Buddha, Jesus, and Ghandi who actualized divine light (to name only three) springs countless people right now that are opening to this light. It is within every single one of us ready to shine. We just have to get out of our own way.

Your mind can facilitate the transmission of your spirit.

You Reap What You Sow

Your subconscious mind is the soil where you plant your dreams and goals. Your creative conscious thinking fertilizes the soil so that dreams grow into maturity. The bamboo tree is an apt comparison.

After planting seeds the bamboo tree can take years to surface into a bud above the soil. But when it surfaces it can grow up to ninety feet within a very short period of time. That seed in the ground needs a lot of love and nourishment in the form of water and proper nutrients in the soil or it will die before coming into reality outside of the ground. Our dreams and goals often die before surfacing into reality, too.

Negative thoughts of hate, greed, jealousy, apathy, pessimism etc. choke out the subconscious seed of your potential. They are poison that not only cast a shadow over your sense of life and belief on what is possible, they have very real consequences on your body. This theory is nothing new. Now there is science backing it up. Thoughts have a direct affect on the body.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.” —Buddha

Neuropeptides

Messenger molecules in the body called neuropeptides transfer thoughts into emotions. Candace Pert, a neuroscientist, calls them the ‘molecules of emotions’. Neuropeptides are present in large amounts in the limbic system, the emotional center of the brain. The science is not important here, understanding is.
Consider the fact that we all see, hear, and feel the pain in the world today. If you work in the human services sector you see it first hand.

These images are being planted on our subconscious minds every day. Then add your work stress. Frustration, angry thoughts and feelings increase when you feel overworked and undervalued. These negative thoughts are transmitted through your body on neuropeptides—messenger molecules—to the cells that make up your organs. Cells receiving these messages for years become overwhelmed and cease to function properly. Over time they transform those natural feelings of happiness, vitality, and optimism most of us felt as children to apathy, lethargy, and hopelessness.

Your thoughts create your reality. The great thing is you can take control over your thoughts, if you choose to. Of course errant thoughts will manifest from time to time but you do not have to validate them with errant action. If you’ve ever had a song reverberate in your mind that your couldn’t get out you understand this. While you may not always be able to control those thoughts from surfacing you can always refrain from acting on them. This is the power of choice.

What you spend most of your time thinking about inevitably becomes your reality. That’s why positive affirmations can actually work. To get in touch with what you think about most of the time requires meditation, bringing awareness to your thoughts.

Repeating simple, positive, powerful statements to yourself, changes the frequency of the vibrations around your own neuropeptides. This helps your cells to function better, your mind to build a strong efficacy, and your whole system to function optimally. Changing your habitual thought patterns to one of positivity, expectation, and peace is completely in your hands. To do this takes courage, honesty, and commitment. You can cultivate awareness of the times when hard feelings arise and own those feelings. Blaming or projecting your emotions on somebody else is to give away your power and set up a landmine of health problems in your body. What you take responsibility for your have power over.

Memories

Unresolved anger, bitterness, fear and worry triggers your stress response and multiplies the negative messages flowing through your body’s cells and manifest in physical illness or chronic health problems. The key is to wake up these memories and bring them into your consciousness. I know this sounds unnerving but leaving those emotions buried is far more harmful to your life. They have to be revived to be released.

We have been trained to push these emotions down. Take a baby for example. She will feel an emotion of joy and smile or burst with some physical expression; the very next moment she may feel an emotion of anger and cry loudly. This is a healthy release. But as she grows we teach her to lock down those emotions, to control her anger and frustration. True we cannot have adults and school age children kicking and screaming one minute and laughing uncontrollably the next. What we often fail to do is train children how to release and channel their emotions in healthy ways.

Anger, for example, is a powerful emotion that can propel you to the next level of life. If controlled and directed properly. If you look at your life and become angry that it is not as good as it could be, this can be good. If you take full responsibility and start taking steps to make it better, of course. Often finding the right coach or mentor is key to turning that anger into positive action. If you blame somebody or something anger tends to manifest in a negative way.

Any creative endeavour using your body is a good to channel emotions outward in positive ways. Dance, working out at a gym, sports, canoe building, basket weaving, painting, singing, playing a musical instrument can facilitate the release of pent-up emotions. Excessive alcohol, drugs, constant negativity in thought only pushes them down further to be released at a later likely untimely event.

To uncover these emotions you need courage. You have to look them in the eyes. When you do you will find that they were much more powerful lurking in the darkness of your shadow than right in front of you. When you shed your conscious light on them they disperse. In fact when they are right in front of you laughter often follows. You look at how silly it is to be feeling this way because of…whatever set you off. The tension and stress is in the repression. This process leads to true personal and spiritual growth. You heal from the inside out.

The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a powerful way to rid your self of stagnant emotions that have been surreptitiously guiding your life. Key in EFT on any search engine and do some research on this powerful but easy technique.

Conscious:

Following our film analogy we can look at the conscious mind as the lens that captures reality and transfers it to the subconscious film. It can control (choose) the light entering. It can tune in opportunity and tune out mass media hysteria, get rich quick schemes, and advertisements that make the bad look good. It can reason, evaluate, and judge. It can transfer images and ideas to the subconscious which can turn those images into reality. A continual state of expectancy inspires creative thought which in turn brings into reality, in due time, any goal or dream. Due time are the important words here.

First you have to discover the nature of the life you want to have. If we go back to our bamboo seed we can see that the nature of the bamboo reside in the seed. An oak’s acorn will produce different results as will a willow, maple, or pine. An oak’s acorn will never produce a bamboo tree. This may seem like an obvious thing to say but how many of us are not aligned with our passion, how many of us are repressing our true dreams? When you align with your proper form, which can be done through regular meditation you give your self the best chance for success. The question is what work will bring you the most happiness? What career path is best for you?

Many people choose their careers for the wrong reasons, out of fear not passion. They fear not having money so they take an opportunity to make money without consulting their spirit or sense of life. All too often people become increasingly unhappy in their occupations and feel trapped, again by money. Then they try to get away with doing the least amount of work possible. This is actually more tiring because it saps creative life energy. We feel happiest when we are productive. How many people do you know that can’t wait to retire so they can cash in on their pensions? Then they will really start living. They are future pacing the best years of their lives away because of fear. Much of this fear was planted on the subconscious mind without them realizing it.

Our brains and bodies are affected by light and darkness, temperature, highs from suger, lows from alcohol, cultural beliefs, prayer and meditation, expectation, trapped emotions,other people’s pain and suffering. Our subconscious minds respond to images very literally; imagined events have a real physical effect.

Ideas and thoughts held in the conscious mind through repetition sow healthy seeds in the subconscious and harmonize the physical body with positive action toward those images. The subconscious sees them as real. Give consistent orders to your subconscious mind and it will carry out those orders unless it is stopped by a stronger order. Emotionally charge negative thoughts and images have the potential to wash away any positive thinking which is why positive thinking alone does not work for most people. A deep sense of unhappiness, unrealized dreams, and ill health are the results. Generations of people are trapped in the welfare game because the images planted on their subconscious mind at a very early age have directed their lives. They cannot conceive on how rise above that environment. They have come to it by default.

“Our unexamined (subconscious) beliefs are like minefields of conflicting ideas, desires, and aversions.” Dan Millman, Everyday Enlightenment Pg. 121

Concentration

“Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.” –Nadia Boulanger

Focused concentration is the force that prevents entropic emotions of apathy, depression, passiveness, detachment, and other forms of distress from manifesting in your daily life. This is the mechanism for transferring positive data to the subconscious mind. Focused attention burns through the subtle mist of negative forces that keep us trapped. This is a skill that requires exercise. Whatever our goals, hopes, and dreams focused concentration is a key component to making them a reality.

In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s excellent book Finding Flow he suggests that the greater our ability to concentrate the deeper the sense of personal happiness we experience. Flow is a term Csikszentmihalyi refers to as a state of mind in which you are fully immersed in an activity, spirit-mind-body harmonized and guided toward a single purpose. Athletes call it being in the ‘zone’, mystics call it ecstasy, Zen philosophy calls it satori. He says this state of mind happens most often when faced with clear goals that require definite action. Flow occurs seemingly spontaneously but it is really the results of skills rising to a reachable challenge. The martial arts are an excellent way to build this important skill.

A heightened state of awareness is the goal of countless hours of training, sparring, and practicing the physical movements; not toward Mastery, but toward in-the-moment flow. When in-the-moment there is no hesitation, just proper action in response to any given situation. In a self-defense scenario a trained artist responds without anger, without judgment, through fear and with only the necessary force to end the attack because she has a deep appreciation and compassion for all life; even the attacker’s life. The paradox of the martial arts is that the greater your ability to kill the more respect you have for life. In a school that follows the intended philosophy that is…

Concentration, focus, discipline, determination, respect, confidence are skills inherent in the practice of the martial arts. A practitioner can expect to build a stronger mind and body but the real benefit springs from capturing the wholeness of life, dancing between the dark and the light parts of ourselves, accepting both, and utilizing your whole energy field in service of others. Shoalin monks focus the same attention to aireal kicks as to making tea.

Drop Your Baggage at the Door

As an instructor in training I was told by my teacher, “Drop your baggage at the door!” By that he meant if I was feeling beaten down by the day or if I was tired and feeling down I was not to bring those feelings into the studio. Working a full time job, writing and publishing books, working toward my black sash, and learning how to be an instructor sometimes wore me down to the point of exhaustion. Then there’s the rejection when you put the creative side of yourself out and into the world. But no matter how I felt when I stood in front of a class it was my responsibility to step out of those emotions and make it about the students. I was to always give the best part of me whether I was feeling good or not. The funny thing is when I was feeling tired and beaten down by the world before the class, I always felt energized and good after. When you make it a practice to step outside your emotions, set them aside for a time, you can achieve anything.

Controlling Your Environment

What subtly influences you? Over the next week become aware of the influences in your life. Listen, really listen to conversation between you and your friends. Can you read the writing on their subconscious films? Can you see it manifest in their actions? After some practice you will be surprised at how much more you know about them. Do you watch television? What shows? Do you read the newspaper? What images are being planted on your subconscious film? How are those images affecting your reality? List those items on paper.

The idea here is not to tune out from everything negative in the world. That is not possible which is why many positive thinking methods do not work. The competition is formidable! We just want to be able to clear them so they don’t fester. We want to transform them. With this practice you will soon discover that you don’t see the world as it is, you see it as you are. Again, it’s much easier to change your perspective than to change the world.

Expectation Exercise:

Using our film metaphor above choose an area of your life where you feel weak. Maybe you would like to be making more money in less hours. Maybe you would like to have a loving relationship with the person of your dreams. Maybe you would like to run a marathon. It doesn’t matter. Just choose something you would like do or have.

Now ask your self this question:

What would it look and feel like to already have this? How would the world look different to me?

Now embrace your higher creativity and talk, act, and think like a person that has or has done what you choose. And keep acting like that until it becomes a reality.

When I was a yellow sash in kung fu, my teacher said, “If you want to be a black sash, act like one now! Fake it until you make it!” Ten years later when he was tying the black sash around my waist I found it to be anticlimactic. I had already been a black sash in my mind for many years.

What shape do you want your life to take? The thoughts you hold today will be your reality tomorrow.