Let your mind be still, windless and calm. Let your body be calm, quiet and cool. Let your spirit be cool, within you and yet beside you so that you may know yourself as more than just a physical being. Know that in quietude this is possible, to know the self as calm, quiet body and spirit. Pause often to arrive at this unified place of peace within. Sit in the peacefulness and know your Self in this way. It’s a very helpful practice in a busy world.
Save your energy for what’s right. Rather than doing too much that doesn’t serve you, do only what conserves and at the same time utilizes your energy so that you are neither depleted nor overloaded. When you think about taking care of yourself, check in with your energy and decide what is the best use of it. Energy implies not only how much you have but what your spirit needs, what your inner you needs, and what your physical you needs too. Check in with the whole self often throughout the day to see how you are doing.
Refrain from negative talk and thoughts about yourself. Instead, accent the positive. Feed yourself new ideas that are nurturing and sustainable and little by little notice the changes taking place. It may seem as if negative changes take place quickly while positive ones take longer, but that’s just another old idea to drop, for things can change for the better in an instant. In a moment’s thought you can change your entire world.
I place my awareness on my calf muscle. “My left calf muscle is warm,” I state. I notice that a faint warming sensation appears in my left calf muscle.
My thinking mind remains passive; it simply observes. My subconscious mind, however, takes my suggestion as its command and orchestrates the body activity needed to create the sensation of warmth in my calf muscle.
My conscious mind has no clue as to how to create warmth in my calf muscle. Active thinking is limited to abstract thought and reason. In contrast, my subconscious mind holds the keys to the kingdom and can manifest, in some material form, any suggestion presented to it.
For instance, if I actively think the thought, “I can’t hula hoop,” my hips will rigidify and the hoop will hit the floor. In this case, the negative suggestion to the subconscious is manifested by the body.
Of course, one might protest, quite accurately, that without practice one will be unable to successfully hula hoop. This is true, but once the ability has been achieved, through diligent practice, a trial performance will most likely fail if one negatively thinks, “I can’t do it.”
What we tell ourselves is what we become. What we listen to we become. If I incessantly listen to negative thoughts broadcast from a television station, I will become a negative person. In this case, the thoughts and beliefs I hear expressed become the command to my subconscious mind to generate the emotional body state that creates the negativity of anger, vigilance, and discontent.
Beliefs are highly insulated thoughts. Thus, if we state a suggestion that opposes an ingrained belief we confuse the subconscious mind with opposing commands. In this case, the more exercised and repeated belief is likely the suggestion the subconscious will follow.
For instance, if one holds a deep belief that they are inadequate, the command to the subconscious that “I am competent” may actually manifest as self-doubt and defeat, felt as anxiety and depression. In this case, it is best to acknowledge the underlying belief and perhaps first process experiences that have contributed to that belief, in an effort to neutralize it.
Bob Monroe suggested using an imaginary heavily-lidded box to place one’s negative beliefs in before giving a new suggestion to the subconscious, to allow for an unfettered experiment of exploration. This is akin to a scientist that may not believe something is possible but suspends judgment and submits to legitimate experimental conditions to see what happens.
Thus, for example, one might not believe they can experience their energy body. By placing their doubting mind in their imaginary storage locker, they are free to suggest to the subconscious that they experience the vibratory state connected to their energy body. In this case, with doubt suspended, one becomes open to a new possibility.
So what is the subconscious mind? The subconscious is the mind that used to completely direct the human animal, prior to the birth of human consciousness. When the subconscious ruled, it responded to the world instinctively. All stimuli to the senses evoked evolutionary programs that were automatically selected to respond to a need or challenge. No thinking was involved, simply stimulus and preprogrammed response.
Animals, for instance, know instinctively how to give birth. With the birth of consciousness, humans lost this connection to immediate, direct knowledge, as they added doctors to the birthing experience to attempt to improve on nature’s instinctive programs.
Though our connection to the subconscious is less direct than in the animal world, we are nonetheless afforded the opportunity to volitionally suggest directly to the subconscious in a way not possible for other animals. This is both a blessing and a curse.
The blessing is, we can manifest a world that functions more efficiently than our evolutionary programming. The curse is that we can manifest a world based on narcissism, which is unsustainable. This, in fact, is the crossroads that we, and our world, currently find ourselves at.
If one aligns one’s suggestions with the truth of one’s heart, one is sure to manifest a world that cares for all beings and is deeply sustainable.
Process limiting beliefs, or put them in the box, while you experiment with the subconscious mind. This is where one might truly experience a world where all things are possible.
Go deeper within to shed the troubles that hold you from finding and connecting to your true essence, your spirit. In balance, true self and spirit will find that they are actually one and the same, not separate as body and soul but one as true essence. And this true essence is capable of so much that you haven’t even experienced yet. There is so much more to life!
