session 676

Chapter 22: Affirmation, The Practical Betterment Of Your Life, And The New Structuring Of Beliefs.

Session 676

If you have a loving regard for yourself, then you will trust in your own direction.

You will accept your present position, whatever it is, as being a part of that direction, and realize that from it can come all the creative elements that you need.  Being yourself and trusting in your own integrity, you will automatically help others.  It does little good to repeat suggestions such as, “I am a worthy person.  I trust myself and my integrity”, if at the same time you are afraid of your own emotions and become upset whenever you catch yourself in what you think of as a negative frame of mind.

As lovers can see the “ideal” in their beloved, and yet be well aware of certain inadequacies, certain deviations from the ideal, so can you, loving yourself, realize that what you think of as imperfections are instead gropings toward more complete becoming.  You cannot love yourself and hate the emotions that flow through you at the same time; because while you are not your emotions, you identify with them so often that in hating them you hate yourself.

Use your conscious mind and its logic.  If you discover that you feel unworthy, then do not simply try to apply more positive belief over that one.  Instead discover the reasons for your first belief.  If you have not already done so, write down your feelings about yourself.  Be perfectly honest.  What would you say if someone else came to you with the same reasons?

Examine what you have written.  Realize that a set of beliefs is involved.  There is a difference between believing that you are unworthy and being unworthy in fact.

Then write a list of your abilities and accomplishments.  These should include such issues as getting along well with others, being attractive, being good with plants or animals, being a good carpenter or cook.  Any talent or achievement should be noted as honestly as you recorded the most minute “defects” earlier.

There is no human being alive who does not have creative abilities in his or her own way, achievements and excellent characteristics, so if you follow these instructions you will find out that you are indeed a worthy individual.

When you catch yourself falling into a mood in which you feel inferior, look at your second list, of abilities and accomplishments.  Then use the positive suggestion in your own worth, backed up by your own personal self-examination.  You may say, “But I know I have great abilities that I am not using.  When I compare myself to others, then I fall far short.  What difference does it make if I have a few mundane achievements that are shared by many others, that are in no way unique?  Surely my destiny involves more than that.  I have yearnings that I cannot express.”

In the first place you must understand that in your own uniqueness it is futile to compare yourself to others, for in so doing you try to emulate qualities that are theirs, and to that extent deny your own miraculous being and vision.  Once you begin comparing yourself to others there is no end to it.  You will always find someone more talented than you are in some way, and so will continue to be dissatisfied.  Instead, through working with your own beliefs, take it for granted that your life is important; begin with it and where you are.  Do not deride yourself because you have not reached some great ideal, but start to use those talents that you have to the best of your ability, knowing that in them lies your own individual fulfillment.

Any help that you give to others will come through the creative utilization of your own characteristics and no one else’s.  Do not get upset with yourself when you find yourself dwelling on negative issues in your life.  Instead, constructively ask yourself why you are doing so.  The answer will come to you.

Use the knowledge as a bridge.  Let whatever emotions are involved happen.  If you do this honestly, feelings of self-worthlessness or despondency will go through and vanish, changing of their own accord.  You may even find yourself impatient with the feelings themselves, or even bored, and hence dismiss them.  Do not tell yourself automatically that they are wrong, however, and then try to apply a “positive” belief like a bandaid.

Have a sense of humor about yourself – not a malicious one but a kindly humorous regard for yourself.  High seriousness is fine when it comes naturally and is not forced.  But it can become pompous if it is prolonged.

If you allow yourself to be more and more aware of your own beliefs, you can work with them.  It is silly to try to fight what you think of as negative beliefs, or to be frightened by them.  They are not mysterious.  You may find that many served good purposes at one time, and that they have simply been overemphasized.  They may need to be restructured rather than denied.

Some beliefs may work very positively for you for certain periods of your life.  Because you have not examined them, however, you may carry them long after they have served their purpose, and now they may work against you.

For example, many of the young believe at one time or another that their parents are omnipotent – a very handy belief that gives children a sense of security.  Grown into adolescent years, the same offspring are then shocked to discover their parents to be quite human and fallible, and another conviction often takes over: a belief in the inadequacy and inferiority of the older generations, and in the rigidity and callousness of those who run the world.

Many embarking upon young adulthood think that the older generations have done everything wrong.  However, this belief frees them from childish concepts in which older persons were always not only right but infallible, and it gives them the challenge to tackle personal and world problems.

For a while the new adults often feel themselves to be invincible, beyond the boundaries of creaturehood, even; this belief, again, endows them with the strength and energy they need to begin a life for themselves and to form their own mass world.  Yet in material terms they must all realize, sooner or later, not only the challenges but the other peculiar characteristics of creaturehood, in which basically no such generalized beliefs make sense.

If at the age of forty you still believe in the infallibility of your parents, then you hold that idea way beyond its advantageous state for you.  Using the methods of this book, you should discover the reasons for this belief, for it will prevent you from exerting your own independence and making your own world.  If you are fifty and are still convinced that the older generations are rigid, fast in the way of growing senile, mentally incompetent and physically deteriorating, then you are holding an old belief in the ineffectiveness of the older generations and setting up negative suggestions for yourself.  Conversely, if you are fifty and still believe that youth is the one glorious and effective part of a lifetime, you are of course doing the same thing.

A young adult gifted in a particular area may hold a belief that this ability makes him or her superior to all others.  This may be quite beneficial for the person involved at a given time, to provide the needed impetus for development and the necessary independence in which the ability can grow.  The same person, years older, may find that the identical belief has been held too long, so that it denies very important emotional give-and-take with contemporaries, or becomes restrictive in other ways.

A young mother may believe that her child is even more important than her husband, and according to the circumstances this belief may help her pay the necessary attention to the child – but if the concept is held as the child grows older, then this can also become highly restrictive.  A woman’s entire adult life can be structured according to such an idea if she does not learn to examine the contents of her mind.  A belief that has positive results for a woman of twenty will not necessarily have the same effect for a woman of forty, who, for example, may still pay far more attention to her children than her husband.

Many of your beliefs are of course cultural, but you have still accepted those that served your own purposes.  As a rule, men in your society believe themselves logical while women are considered intuitive.  Woman, now trying to assert their rights, often fall into the same trap, but backwards – trying to deny what they think of as inferior intuitive elements for what they think of as superior logical ones.

Certain beliefs then will structure your lives, often for given periods.  You will grow out of many of them.  When you do, the inner structuring will change, but you must not cravenly acquiesce to “leftover” beliefs once you recognize them.

“I feel inferior because my mother hated me”, or, “I feel unworthy because I was scrawny and small as a child”.  You may find as you work with your beliefs that a feeling of inferiority seems to stem from such episodes.  It is up to you as an adult to get on top of your beliefs, to realize that a mother who hates her child is already in difficulties, and that such a hate says far more about the mother than it does about her offspring.  It is up to you to understand that you are now a grown person, and not a child to be bullied.

The Point of Power Is in the Present.

The point is not in the past unless you abjectly decide to acquiesce to worn-out beliefs that no longer serve you.

If you believed you were unworthy because you were scrawny and bullied, then in some way you undoubtedly used that belief for your own purposes.  Admit it.  Discover what the purposes were.  Perhaps you compensated – became athletic later, or used the impetus to go ahead in your own way.  If your mother hated you, you may have used that to assert independence, to give you an excuse or a pathway; but in all cases you form your own reality, and so you agreed to it.

Many people who write to me feel that they have unusual psychic or writing abilities, or sense an outstanding need to help others.  They constantly compare what they do with what they think they are capable of, but often without making a start toward the development of their own abilities.

They want to write great philosophical theories, for example, perhaps never putting the pen to paper, or trusting themselves enough to begin.  Some want to HELP THE WORLD AT LARGE but all they do is think about this desire without trying to implement it at all in practical terms.  The ideal in their minds becomes so great that they are always dissatisfied with their own performance yet they are afraid to make a start.

The loving acknowledgement of their own uniqueness would in itself show them how to begin to use their own abilities in their own way, and to trust their present situation.  The ideal is not yet materialized.  It is just the essence of a direction.  But that direction can only be found by using what you have in the now that you know, and by acquiescing to your own opportunities and abilities, and using those through the power of the present.