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Controlling Your Attention

We don’t learn to control our attention when we are young. We have to learn to control our attention when we are adults.

When we are young we were told where to put our attention, who to put it on, and how long to keep it there. We learned to put our attention on what other people told us to. Since adults taught us to put our attention on them, or on what they wanted to put our attention on, (school work, chores, minding our manners, following the rules, etc) by default we learned not to put our attention on our self. We became automated to have others control our attention.

Indirectly we learned not to pay attention to our emotions, what we were feeling, or what we wanted.

When you become an adult, and you realize that your attention is still governed by all those rules you collected, or that your mind is looking for other people to direct your attention. You might even feel uncomfortable if it is your own hands with no one telling you what to do. You may find your self trapped with your thoughts and beliefs controlling your attention. Realizing that you are trapped, and don’t have control over your attention is one of the first steps towards freedom.

It is only as adults that we have the opportunity to take control over our own attention, notice how we feel, and direct our life in a way we want. This is something of an opportunity not typically available to us when we were children.

Oh,,, and it will take work, and many attempts to free your attention from limiting beliefs and fears.

Such is a spiritual warriors training ground.

Specific exercises for gaining control over your own attention can be found at my Self Mastery Course at Pathway to Happiness.

Near Enemy

A good tool, technique, practice, or philosophy, can help you out of suffering and into greater happiness and love. And when that tool, technique, practice, or philosophy is taken too far, it can become it’s own dogmatic trap that create unhappiness and suffering. That applies to the tools, techniques, and practices I teach as well.

For a more detailed explanation and understanding of the Near Enemy issue.

What is wrong with me? A Different Perspective

My perspective is basically this. You are fine. There is nothing wrong with who you are. You may not feel that way about your self and that’s usually due to lots of beliefs we have about our self. It’s these false beliefs that are the problem. They are stories about what is wrong with us. But it is the beliefs that are false. When those clear up we will feel fine about our self again.

The key is having the awareness to perceive the difference between what you are, and what the beliefs in your mind “say” you are.

Free Audio podcast covering the question “What is wrong with me?” It is a very clear explanation about the beliefs and negative thoughts in our mind that cause us to feel terrible about our self.

Practical steps to developing this awareness and using it for change can be found in my Self Mastery course.

Motivation to do the Work

As we do this inner work of casting out the false beliefs and agreements in our mind we become happier. And as we become happier much of the motivation we had to do this work slips away.

With less of the motivation, we do less of the work that got us there. This makes us easier prey to fall back into old patterns. Why does this happen is the question to ask.

It is because in the beginning most of our motivation originated from pain. As we progress, we have less pain so we do not have the painful suffering to motivate us. Then how can we maintain our practice and stay on the pathway to greater happiness?

As we evolve, then so our motivation will have to evolve from pain to pleasure and love.

New home play assignment. Go do something fun, that you enjoy, that is pleasurable to you.

Make love with your partner if that fits the assignment. Create Fun, Laugh, be Silly, combine them.

Then build the desire to feel more of that.

Practice often.

Hope for Changing the Suffering of Humanity

When you consider that the suffering of humanity is because we are trapped in our limited fear based beliefs of self importance and ego it is the changing of these beliefs that is the solution to human suffering. In the beginning the idea of changing beliefs seems like such a simple one.

As you become more awakened towards an enlightened state of consciousness, it becomes increasingly apparent how challenging the process of changing beliefs actually is. You can look at the challenge of people in humanity changing their collective beliefs and the problem is much bigger than you thought. And at the same time, because you are more aware, you are more hopeful and positive about it than ever before.

This is one of those paradoxes where conflicting ideas are both true. Yes it is a much more challenging than I ever considered and I am more optimistic about the possibility than I ever was. The Truth often seem to make no sense this way to the limitations of linear logic and reason.

As you

Challenge to Love

The challenge is not just to love. We’ve all done that quite successfully and easily as children. The greater challenge is to love with awareness that the world is a difficult place, where people are not always kind, or what we want them to be. The challenge is not to love people when they are beautiful, but to love them when they are not.

The challenge is also to love and accept your self, even when don’t measure up to your beliefs about what you should be. This is a spiritual warrior’s challenge.

Posted at: A Spiritual Warriors Challenge to Love

Website: ToltecSpirit: A guide for spiritual warriors based in the Four Agreements

Having Things In Your Mind Under Control

I used to think I had things under control. That is I believed I “knew” what was going on. As I became more aware I realized that everything that I knew was just information that I had learned from other people. I had unknowingly agreed with the ideas of other people about how the world worked, how people behaved, even what I was and what I wasn’t.

My next wave or realizations involved learning that what I knew wasn’t true. This was humbling. It was also unsettling to realize that what I thought of the world and other people wasn’t true. It was somewhat fearful to realize that the authorities that I looked to for direction and understanding of my world,,, didn’t always know what they were talking about.

Teachers didn’t know everything there was to know about life. Professors of physics couldn’t explain why any particles were here, or what was the force driving the ones they could see. Wake up in your adult years and learn that there may not be such a thing as gravity. Clergy weren’t always living a life of respect, love, and happiness so how could they guide others.

As I became more aware I noticed that more and more of the ideas in my own head weren’t true. I had less to say because of this.

There was temptations to grab hold of a theology or philosophy for safety and claim it is what I believe in. It will guide me. But something within was holding out for Truth.

In the process of letting go of what I believed I knew that I knew less. Over time I moved through the uncomfortable emotions that arise as we dissolve the chatter of internal dialog in the mind. Embracing humility was liberating me from my Self Importance (ego). There was freedom in not knowing. What was a fearful process was becoming a quiet and peaceful mind.

For the spiritual warrior one of the challenges is to control the knowledge that is in their mind. For ordinary men and women this doesn’t mean anything. That is because knowledge and ideas run around in their mind uncontrolled and they don’t even notice.

This post on Having Things In Your Mind Under Control originally posted at:

https://www.toltecspirit.com/2010/07/under-control/

The Law of Attraction Is A Myth

I don’t buy into the Law of Attraction. You don’t always attract what is in your consciousness. You only need one instance to prove a law invalid. Christ had his body beaten and crucified but it wasn’t something he attracted because he had it in his consciousness. He was treated that way because of beliefs other people held in their consciousness

Nelson Mandela spent years confined to prison, but not because it reflected his consciousness. He was held in prison because other people held in their consciousness beliefs of apartheid. You don’t always attract what is in your consciousness. Sometimes you are the recipient of what other people express from their belief system.

If something is a law it operates all the time everywhere. The law of gravity is a law because it applies to everything we know everywhere we can measure and test it. If it only worked sometimes or in some places it wouldn’t be a law. The same with the Law of Attraction. It’s too inconsistent. It’s only a theory that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It’s not a “Law.” It’s a Myth of Attraction. If it really worked a lot more people would have what the want.

Originally posted at The Law of Attraction is a Myth

Where you can find Guidance and Wisdom for the Spiritual Warrior based in the Four Agreements

Cleaning House and Cleaning Your Mind

It seems we spend more time cleaning our house than cleaning up our mind. It’s nice to come home to a clean house. But you don’t spend all your time there. You spend a lot more time with your own mind than you do your house. It makes sense then that you would spend some time making it a nice and enjoyable place to be.

For practical steps and exercises on cleaning up the fear based beliefs in your mind do the exercises in the Self Mastery course.

Cleaning Your House and Cleaning Your Mind

What Happens When We Lose Control

I was listening to a group of people talking the other day. In this particular group the tendency was to drink alcohol in a self abusive way. They were mostly talking about what they do when they lose control of their emotions.

After a while someone asked me what I thought. I said,

“When we lose control,,, what do we lose control to?
When we lose control,,, what is it that then has control?
When this “other thing” then has control,,,, where are we?

Where did we go and what are we doing when this “other thing” has control of us?”

Things I think about.

This post originally published at What happens when we Lose Control

Toltecspirit.com a website with guidance for spiritual warriors based in the Four Agreements.