We all live in a perpetual loop where our habitual thinking patterns lead to habitual emotional loops that lead to habitual actions that lead to habitual and predictable outcomes (these outcomes are the “what is” in your reality right now).
The first step towards change is awareness because awareness helps us work backwards through this process
Waking Up
In levels of “awakeness,” here are the levels that we operate on (from most asleep to most awake):
- Deep Sleeper – This is when we are trying to force reality and other people to change in order to change the outcomes. We offer negativity (such as anger, hatred, resentment, or violence) towards people or circumstances in an attempt to manipulate them to make them more conducive to what we want.
- Light Sleeper – This is when we are trying to change our actions to create different outcomes. This includes the skill-building/habit changing stage of things. It is obviously already better than the above category, as it implies taking self-responsibility, but it is unfortunately a pretty ineffective place to put our effort and attention because it is not changing the root cause. This kind of focus can very easily lead people to burn out because it promotes the idea that if you just read one more book or do a little more at work or tweet 2 more times this week…then the outcome will change. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure to add to an already clogged pipe.
- Waking Up – We are now focused on our habitual emotions to try to understand the actions leading to certain outcomes. For example: most talk-therapy & even body healing practices. This is much much better than the above. The reason this is still not ideal is because, until we change the thoughts that are creating the negative emotions, we can “heal” or “understand” our pain as much as we want, but tomorrow we will simply think the same thoughts again and recreate the same internal pain.
- Awake – We are now focused on our thinking patterns – positive thinking is very effective as it helps us actually reprogram our thoughts to move them towards more productive patterns allowing a trickle down effect through all of the other above categories. Combine this with the understanding that reality reflects your beliefs, you can see why working at this level, is powerful. However, until you move on to Level 5, you are not in touch with your emotions as a guide for you in accessing thoughts that reduce internal resistance, not increase it.
- Wide Awake – Here we see our emotions as guides to understanding whether a thought is productive and we slowly align ourselves with better and better feeling thoughts. Our emotions are our indicators for whether a thought is allowing what we want to come to us or if its creating more resistance. When you realize that the “outcome” really has so much more to do with whether we are allowing the unbelievable power of source energy to flow through us, then we realize that it’s way more important that you choose nonresistant thoughts. Positive thinking is not thinking positive thoughts, but rather thinking nonresistant thoughts. How do we know that our thoughts are non-resistant? Our emotions tell us so because they feel joyous and appreciative and excited and trusting.
- Transcended – Here we finally just let go of the outcome and revel in just feeling good – this is the truest highest state. Realize that this does not mean that we sacrifice anything. It means that we stop sacrificing anything. You live in the moment, in your joy, in who you are, and you watch as, for the first time in your life, you stopped closing the tap on the flow moving through you and you watch as you start getting what you want easily. The irony is, you stop really even wanting it that much because the reason you wanted it so badly was because you wanted to feel powerful and good and safe and now, you feel all that regardless.
It’s kind of like when you’re chasing that girl/guy/job/validation and then, when you stop caring about it, it calls.
Each level we reach we find more wellbeing, more power, more influence, more success, more wealth, and more joy and gratitude.
This isn’t about sacrificing. This is about stopping to sacrifice anything and live fully and truly.