Spirit Pages (continued)
E1) Reality for a person differs depending upon what level of meaning they are focusing on.
We have previously discussed what meaning is and how we can discover the meaning of events. We have talked about how meaning is the purpose of existence from the Spirit level. We can have experiences and think of their meaning as being literal. A tragedy is a tragedy, and nothing more. If we operate from this level, we are limited to �meaningless� suffering and pleasure in many experiences. Meaningful experiences become just a small fraction of our total life.
If we examine the meaning of our experiences as we have discussed previously, and work within a Spirit framework of understanding, we reframe our whole experience of life, which redefines what �reality� is for us. The level of meaning we allow ourselves limits us or frees us up.
Think about taking a walk in a park on a beautiful day. Every tree, every flower and every person you see is more than an object. Your mind colors that experience with its own unique emotional biases. Your memories and associations create emotional qualities that cover everything you see. You mind has trained itself to ignore a lot of this input, but it is still there. You might recoil at the sight of a dead bird, or light up when you see a balloon let loose into the sky. The objects contain no emotional content, but your reactions are all emotional. The level of meaning you are operating at also casts a broad shadow. Events can be meaningless or empty, or they can be meaningful.
Meaning can also be felt at a gut or emotional level. Rather than finding an event to be meaningless, you might frame the situation differently in your mind. You could say that although a particular song does not move you, and therefore has no immediate emotional meaning to you, it may have meaning on an intellectual level, or on a level you are not conscious of yet. Seeing through Spirit eyes, you could see the meaning of it and place it in context.
Synchronicities are a funny phenomenon. If you know someone for a long time and become very familiar with them, you might notice that you call each other at the same time, are able to sense when the other person really needs help, or may be able to finish their sentences. Intuitive links between people seem to be enhanced by closeness. The closeness of the relationship becomes a level of meaning at which you operate. As you zoom in on the person intuitively by knowing them well, you adjust your reality to cause it to be more synchronous with their own.
You may, during the course of your life, experience a synchronous feeling with Cosmic Time, where you feel as if you are directly touching the Divine in some way. You may find that certain people are a positive influence on you, and that when you are around them, these transcendent states seems to come more quickly.
The awareness that leads to synchronous experiences is a level of understanding of how the physical and Divine are one single uninterrupted continuum of experience. Focusing on that level of meaning can bring that kind of experience into physical being.
So, each level of meaning colors reality and also influences events in physicality. In the next exercise, we will discuss how to see with your Spirit Eyes and perceive meaning directly.
Exercise: Spirit Eyes
Begin by getting relaxed and having your journal and pen ready. Get comfortable and look at the room around you. Imagine a thermometer that is marked with zero at the bottom, 100 at the mid point and 200 at the top. This is our Supplementary Scale. When the mercury hits 100, you are fully in a state. But, when it reaches 200, you are more deeply and firmly in that same state.
Tell yourself that as you count from one upwards, you will enter into the state of �Spirit Eyes,� which is the state that will allow you to perceive things at the Spirit level of understanding, directly. Count upwards until the mercury hits 100. Now you are in �Spirit Eyes.� Continue to count upwards until you reach 200. When you reach 200, stop.
Think of a few recent events that have disturbed you or challenged you. They could even be ongoing situations that you are still facing. Write each situation down, leaving space under each one for your own notes that you will write later in this exercise.
Now, read the first one you wrote and write down what you see in this Spirit Eyes state as being the meaning of that event. Focus on seeing with these eyes rather than with your normal day-to-day mind.
Do this for the rest of the situations you wrote down. Now that you know what the meaning of these events are, you can take steps on your own to try and accomplish these meanings as personal goals. Ask yourself, �What can I do to learn this understanding on my own?� Write down the answers that you come up with under each situation that you have seen with Spirit Eyes.
When you work on having more and more Spirit perception in your life, you begin to see more of a discrepancy between your old way of thinking and Spirit modes of thought. For example, you might be caught up in anger at a person, and then looking through your �Spirit Eyes� you see that on that level of perception you are not angry with them at all. Furthermore, that anger becomes a situation that you can re-perceive with your Spirit Eyes to get a new goal of personal growth going.
In Spirit, no one can hurt another without giving their permission. The physical world is part of the Spirit world, but you are not conscious that that is the case. So, you are not conscious of giving permission to be hurt to those people that seem to hurt you. Thus you have the idea of being a victim and of carrying anger for others. You remain a �victim� as long as you are not fully engaged in Spirit consciousness.
As you begin to tap into the Spirit meaning of things that are happening to you, you begin to see that what you get reflects what you want at a level that you have not tapped into consciously before. As you consciously engage in seeking out that meaning, your life can change for the better accordingly. Your life no longer depends on suffering as a means of delivering that meaning. You can �get� it more directly. And in pursuing that meaning the suffering falls away.
As you wear your Spirit Eyes more and more, you become aware that you are operating at two different levels. Your physical consciousness is habitual, but your Spirit consciousness is not. Your feelings may be very different on the two different levels. You experience more of a sense of freedom at Spirit level, and you are not overly attached to any one form, environment or person. Your existence is fluid and creative, and you move with passion from moment to moment. You may not feel this way in the physical world. Your ability to live at full volume as a person, to be fully yourself and to fully express yourself (see www.geocities.com/visualizenews/june2002#july2002 for more details), can also contribute to living more passionately.
Focusing on the Spirit meaning of what you are going through will lead you into a different experience of life than focusing on the level of meaning of how you feel. It removes some of the fixation on the issue of whether or not are you getting what you superficially want right now. The problem with this kind of focus is not that you are being shallow or greedy, but that you are not looking at the broader picture of your wants and needs.
A person who is attracted to crime and certain kinds of drugs wants immediate gratification, even at an expense to others and themselves. We all want instant gratification. The difference is not so much �goodness� as it is an awareness of things we want on a broader scale. Maybe smoking crack would feel good in the moment, but it would also potentially damage your self-esteem, become and addiction, and perhaps even ruin your chances of doing certain things in life. Seeing the bigger picture is salvation from this kind of trap, not some quality of goodness or self-restraint.
We operate entirely on desire. Any program or way of thinking that seeks to squelch desire will fail. We can only change by adding new desires that alter our existing desires in a certain direction. Focusing on the level of meaning of a life plan, or where you want to be in a few years, will overcome a world of petty temptations and entanglements.
For example, I gave up being sexually active in order to protect my health. I formed a strong desire to be healthy and to look for the right person with an eye toward forming a long-lasting relationship based on trust. This didn�t come out of my being some sort of goody-goody, but by seeing the alternative choice in action, and realizing that is was not what I wanted, I was able to form a new desire. I didn�t squelch my old desire, but reshaped it to serve my greater desire for personal fulfillment and physical health. So, focusing on a higher level of meaning and forming desires at those levels can reshape our whole future.
E2) Every action is a state of being that corresponds with its understanding.
Any action in the physical has a meaning that was assigned to it at the Spirit level. This is the meaning that the person wished to experience through taking this action. The meaning becomes part of the person who takes part in the action. For example, a person is forced to jump in cold water off of a dock to save a drowning child. The action has the meaning for that particular person of realizing their ability to face their fear and help others. This is the meaning that they wished to convey to themselves, from the Spirit level. The action has many other levels of meaning. Once that experience has happened to the person they then contain that meaning.
There is a purely emotional meaning as well as an intellectual meaning for every action. At any level the event will have some meaning. However, at lower levels of consciousness, no particular meaning will be decipherable to that particular level of consciousness. So, while an activity may seem meaningless, like performing a boring and pointless activity at work, the meaning becomes more and more discernable at higher levels of understanding. At Spirit level, all experiences have meanings on top of other meanings to the person who is having the experiences.
Every action is a state of being. That is just a way of saying that all activities take that unique being that you are at any particular point in time and direct the attention and body in a particular manner, as well as the emotions and intellect. This makes the moment(s) of that activity even more specific. This serves to generate a very specific meaning associated with your state of consciousness as you took that action. So, each moment of an activity has many levels of meaning, including a Spirit meaning. Also, an entire activity from beginning to end will convey a certain meaning on different levels, including the Spirit level.
The same activity, performed ritually on a daily basis may seem bereft of uniqueness, but the uniqueness of the individual person at that moment is the source of the uniqueness. Also, the activity may elicit a unique emotional response that will be particularly meaningful. Therefore, each day of activities is a world of worlds; each world is available to be explored separately. As all activities have a beginning, middle and end, then that span of time for that individual consciousness is a state of being and a world that is dynamic, expressing their movement through time.
You may be wondering at this point what the practical application of all this information is. Well, first of all, don�t be impatient. Being impatient is an action. Your whole being is a collection of actions. You know if you have read the previous chapters that all knowledge is meaningful. And, you probably have inferred by this point that all knowledge at this level is potentially practical. This is because we are discussing the truth, and the truth is always useful.
The actions of my grandparents, standing alone, do not do justice to the impact they had on the world. They created my parents and by default myself. I can�t see very much of what I write about in them. They might not have understood or appreciated what I am doing today. But just as surely as every meal they cooked and every load of laundry they washed had an impact on their lives, those activities also had an impact on mine. And, my life will impact others.
So, every word I write contains every load of laundry they washed. The beliefs they held that were false or true are all part of what I write today, by default. And, because the state of being that was their consciousness while engaged in certain actions contained their innermost lives, they themselves are physically, mentally and emotionally a part of every word I write.
It is important to understand that this is not a discussion of an abstraction, but of hard reality. My hard reality contains them. Every action I take is what it is and then so much more in the future. Every action is a state of being that is its own universe, and every aspect of our lives, past and future, is part of that world. You can�t understand any action you take without seeing the bigger picture. To be who my grandparents had to be and to do what they did, they had to live the lives that they lived and suffer what they suffered.
Our own suffering is an action of self-discipline. Suffering is essentially a form of work. We make the sacrifice of going on living in order to have certain things. So, our suffering is effort. The effort that we make automatically changes us, as we sacrifice our own energies, consciousness and comfort to make something happen. We actively reshape ourselves through effort.
Our effort is to become who we will be in the future. So, in essence, our whole lives are work on ourselves as we seek to become who we wish to be. The action of working, struggling and overcoming obstacles in our life, and enduring suffering, is a state of being of inner work and self-sacrifice that transforms us into different beings.
Because we are Spirit beings, every moment of action reveals its highest new possible form. Spirit promises us that our lives will ultimately reveal our highest potentials and highest possibilities within the limits of who we are. We will live to touch the ceiling of our possibilities. If you don�t like what you see now, wait and allow that potential to rise to the surface; it will come when the time is right.
In the next exercise, we will look at how you can relive an action you took a long time ago as a state of being, and see what that reveals about the effect that action had on your life.
Exercise: State of Being of an Action
Get into a relaxed posture, with you pen and journal handy. Think about an experience where you helped someone in some way. Once you have identified the event, see that action, from beginning to end, as a world that looks like a bubble from the outside. Enter that bubble/world. Looking from the inside of the bubble, feel the quality of the energy there. Is there a positive feeling?
Look around in all directions, up and down and to the sides. To either side you might see the influences on this situation, the people and events that were simultaneously unfolding. Looking down, you might see the past as it relates to this action. Upwards, you might see the overriding principals and positive Spiritual states that relate to this event. What light of higher understanding was shining through you at the time of that action?
You can use this technique to examine a course of action that you are considering taking in the near future. Examine the bubble/world of the action and see how it feels to you. If the energy and feeling is positive, that might be a positive sign in terms of following up with that action. But, as always, use your judgment, first, last and always when making any kind of decision.
E3) The feeling and qualities of any overriding idea permeates every aspect of its manifestation.
From a Spirit perspective, everything is essentially an idea in Spirit. People, places, ideas and actions as well as states of being, deities and planes of consciousness are all ideas. If a person is a follower of the works of Ayne Rand, and that person shares her beliefs, then the overriding feeling/quality of her philosophy will permeate that person. However, that person may misunderstand her philosophy, rendering it in their own unique way in their mind, and thus the feeling/quality of her philosophy is lost to the degree it is misunderstood. They can be seen as spreading a certain kind of energy around wherever they go.
Of course other people will react to that energy, rather than just taking it in unfiltered. But, the influence will be felt. Those people who share her philosophy and understand it as she did will be tied together by a certain feeling/quality, which will be a commonality that comes out of the overriding idea of her philosophy. Our own society has a certain feeling quality. When people talk about the 70�s in America, it evokes a certain feeling/quality as well. Every person, movement, thing, project, group, piece of music and idea has a feeling/quality.
If we see our life as a collection of overlapping ideas, each with their own unique feeling quality, we can then look at those areas of our life that are unsatisfactory. Is our love life unsatisfactory in some way? You can probably talk about what you are or are not getting that you want, or what you are getting that you don�t want anymore.
See your love life as a bubble that is an idea that is represented by a bubble. Enter that bubble and look around. Write down the first five descriptive words that come to mind about how this space feels to you.
Read your notes back to yourself. Looking at the negative words, you can now see that these negative qualities are part of the overriding idea of your love life, as it is at this time. By tying positive opposing ideas to your love life, you can reduce and eventually negate these negative qualities. We will discuss this further in the exercise for this chapter.
Meaning is the overriding idea of all existence. Meaning is expressed as the feeling of an idea. This is just another step down toward physical form. In a nutshell, this means that the emotional qualities we tapped into in the previous short exercise revealed some feeling/qualities associated with the meaning of our love life. We can change those feeling/qualities by adding a desire for a particular type of meaning to the meaning of our love life as it is now. That additive process can be tailored to add a specific feeling or feelings that negate the negative feeling(s) we want to get away from. Let�s tackle this in the following exercise.
Exercise: Altering a Feeling Quality
Please select your professional life, health, or some area of your life that is problematic other than your love life. See this area of your life as a bubble that represents that idea. Walk into that bubble and look around the inside of it. Write down the first five descriptive words that come to mind about how this space feels to you.
Now, select one negative feeling/quality that you discovered in doing this exercise that you would like to change. Go back into the bubble and move to a specific level that contains the meaning of this area of your life. For example, it would be a level of the bubble that represents your career life; that level would represent the meaning of your career life, a more specific subset of the whole idea of your career life. You can move to this level simply by wishing it and counting from one to five; when you reach five you will be there. You may see a complex structure containing many different meanings. Decide on what word or phrase best expresses the opposite of the negative idea you are trying to negate.
For example, if your work life word were �unsatisfying� you would want to pick �satisfying� as the negating that unsatisfying quality of feeling. Take that word (or phrase) and say it out loud in this meaning/environment, and a meaning will be produced. For example, you might say, �My work life is satisfying.� It will look like a floating abstract object. Touch it and feel what that meaning is, then write it down in your journal.
Then say outloud the meaning you just wrote down. Follow that by saying, �I wish to want this value from this time forward as part of my _____ life� (career, home, whatever area you are working with), then restate the meaning you wrote in your journal. Say this whole string again two more times.
To give you an example, I explored my obesity as the basic idea. I entered this idea as a bubble. The feeling/qualities I first noticed were feeling tense, still, cautious, afraid and stale. I summed up all these feelings into one, of being frozen in fear.
I decided on �positive activity� as the feeling/quality I wanted to add to negate my feeling frozen in fear. I went to the level of the idea that contained the meaning of my obesity. I said �positive activity� there and the meaning it produced gave me an abstract form. This form revealed to me the meaning, �I�m not afraid to take risks in order to do the right thing and live creatively and freely, expressing who I truly am despite opposition.� I wished to desire this meaning as part of the meaning of my life, which will hopefully reduce my obesity over time. This desire will become part of who I am.
The final step is to seal your new desire by looking at the advantages. See a version of your future without this desire, then with it, having it show you all the advantages to be gained by desiring this new meaning you have added. Take notes in your journal as needed. Feel free to repeat this exercise for all the negatives in any problem areas in your life.
E4) The overriding idea of a thing supercedes the sub-ideas of a thing.
From a Spirit standpoint, every idea has an overriding idea. That idea is meaning. Meaning represents the highest level of consciousness of an idea, but there are infinite levels of meaning beyond meaning, so in a sense it is just the beginning. The meaning of an idea is conceived of in its conscious creation. So, a being, such as a Spirit being would understand the meaning of the states of consciousness they create, if they are taking on the process in a truly conscious manner. So our life, which was created in this manner, was created to get at a certain meaning. The meaning in our lives is the top-dog of forces in our lives. It supercedes intellectual ease and emotional comfort, and even our physical well-being and safety. Meaning therefore does not create physical events, but directs them to any particular direction it needs to in order to fulfill itself.
When bad things happen to us and we yell at God and the Universe, we should redirect our rage at our own buried desire for meaning, which is unlocked by all sorts of circumstances. People seem to build their lives around a list of things that can�t happen to them. They can�t be this or can�t feel that or be associated with whatever. If we demand to not have certain experiences, we have to look at our overall lives and realize that whatever gives us the meaning we wanted is exactly what will happen. Our only hope of exerting any control over the process is to add new desires for meaning that will alter the existing desires for meaning that we already have. This can change the form and shape of how things play out.
There is a pecking order in reality, from higher down to lower levels of consciousness. Meaning is the highest order of reality. Groups of ideas can also share a particular meaning. For a person, they might look at a string of seemingly unrelated events that somehow tie together. For example, why does a person lose their friends, their job and their spouse in a matter of a few months? Or, how do a series of unplanned encounters result in meeting several friends from high school? By looking at the meaning of groups of events, we can tie them together.
Also, if we share an event with a person, such as a car accident or winning the lottery together, we can look at the meaning of our collective experience. If you look at the news and find it unimaginable why certain events are unfolding, or why the world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket, you can examine the meaning of collective cultural events. This meaning will apply to you and any other persons� involved. Although the event will have a totally personal meaning, it can also be interesting to see the non-personal meaning of societal events. Seeing the meaning in the events that effect others can make us more powerful agents of change, as we are able to focus on the underlying reality.
Simply acknowledging that you share a search for meaning with others can help you feel that you are part of something greater, rather than a victim or eyewitness to a great tragedy. The nature of the physical world is essentially tragic. Everything rots and dies and there is great suffering. The meaning we get out of life is the redeeming quality we can take with us. It is definitely better to examine the meaning of your past and present suffering and come out of life with a sense of having had a very meaningful life than feeling as if your life was meaningless. When we lose ourselves in the smaller ideas around us, it can be startling to be suddenly caught up in the greater movements that are around us. We forget they are there, as we get distracted, and then they catch us off guard. Don�t be afraid to add your own desire for new meaning to the collective desire for meaning you happen to be caught up in. It will to some degree effect everyone involved for the better. In the following exercise we will examine some of these ideas in more detail.
Exercise: Exploring Collective and Relationship Meanings
Begin by getting relaxed and having your pen and journal handy. Start with an image of a bubble that represents the idea of a situation you are going through, either collectively with others or with a single person. Go into the bubble as a world. Get a feeling for the energy of the situation there. Now, go to the level that has the meaning of the idea (for both of you). See that meaning as a floating bubble or object. Merge that object or bubble with yourself in order to fully understand the meaning of this shared situation. Write down what you get. Finally, think about something you could do to garner that kind of meaning that you recorded consciously, through your own efforts. Refer to previous exercises to modify this meaning with other meanings, remembering that you will not have as much impact as you do on your own individual issues. Try this whole process for a societal issue as well.
E5) Every desire/goal unfolds as a series of events, states of being, feelings, objects, environments, etc., hierarchically laid out through time.
This means that every desire that is conceived of and comes into being in some way, grows out of the seed of the desire. The desire itself contains the success or failure of its own manifestation. That one person should conceive of a desire and follow through on it and successfully complete it and another should do the same and fail comes from the subtle differences in a desire from person to person making a world of difference. Every desire is like an acorn, with the entire plan of how the tree will turn out within it. The real culprit is the meaning behind the desire. The meaning is often the desire behind the desire. The desire serves the meaning behind it. When the person reaches the point that their pursuit of that desire no longer serves the meaning behind it, then the desire will not continue to flourish unless a new meaning appears to support it. This is where you as an individual with choice comes in. You can artificially add meaning to support your goals. You can also bind specific goals to specific meanings.
To simplify somewhat, let�s look at what beings at Spirit level do. They can desire something immediately, or to have something down the road in some form. Because they are coming from a place of total control, they would distinguish between a possible wish for the future and a definite planned wish for the future. They might have a possible plan that needs to be explored mentally a bit before they try it. This could be developed down to a mental and emotional level of understanding of what this desire entails.
It would be like thoroughly researching a topic, except the Spirit being would ultimately know the desire they wish to pursue very personally as well. They would then be in a position to decide if they want to fully pursue it. This is sort of a missed step in my own and other peoples� manifestation efforts. We conceive of an idea then withdraw because of our doubts and fears. We can do what the Spirit being does and manifest a desire to the emotional level. This will bring us to an intellectual and emotional understanding of what we think we want, to allow us to decide if we want to pursue it in the physical.
This in turn allows us to move forward with our pursuit of the desire and not turn away from it due to doubts and fears. You can write out the desire, then add �This manifests for me through Spirit.� Or, you can say, �This manifests for me to the emotional level through Spirit.� The latter is what we are currently discussing. By reading this out loud regularly, we can move ourselves along with this goal. Spirit advices me that only one reading is really necessary, but that it will at least keep you in touch with the process of this desire, to see if you are maintaining interest in it over time. But only the first reading is necessary, as Spirit consciousness is outside both time and �effort.�
Ultimately, Spirit consciousness is timeless and as such, there is no great hurry in pursuing things. The immediacy of desire is what makes a goal vibrant, and in Spirit the quality of consciousness is always vibrant. So, in Spirit there is less attachment to long-term goals, and more interest in desires of a more immediate nature. However, if a long-term goals is very alive, then it can be pursued vigorously. But there is little room for �should� thinking in goals setting in Spirit. If the desire is not both personal and immediate, it does not carry any weight. Spirit beings also understand that all desires will ultimately be explored in some manner, somewhere down the road. This isn�t so much a matter of literally exploring every desire you ever had, one by one, so much as it is an exploration of the essence of those desires in total over time.
In exploring the unfolding of desires, the killers are blame and guilt. Out of these come a host of evils that drag down the vibration of a desire, making it a burden. As we said before, the thought of what you should do rather than what is most vital to you is a killer. Obviously we have obligations we must live up to and I am not suggesting you abandon them. At the same time, we can get bogged down in unreal obligations to others.
If we have children or a partner, we carry a certain contractual obligation. We may decide we have that kind of obligation to our parents. But if we see the world of suffering around us, we may feel forced into the role of caregiver. Feeling forced definitely makes you feel like a victim and brings unhappiness. The desires to serve and help are appealing, but may come from a place of wanting to treat others as victims. If serving others is vital and alive to you, then definitely pursue it. If it feels like you are forcing yourself, then give your more vital desires a chance to blossom and take form. We may fall for society�s or parental pressure to become �important� or wealthy, but holding down a significant job such as a doctor or lawyer. We may have projected on us the feeling of being a failure and have feelings of shame forced on us if we do not comply with these pressures.
For gays and lesbians, they might feel pressured to get married against their will and even have children they don�t want. The problem with this is that it forces the person away from their most vital desires and natural state of being. If you most vital desires involve harming others in some way, they obviously should not be pursued. You can work at the level of meaning to perhaps alter your desires over time by adding meaning or working to remove the influence of sadism in your desire through self-examination. Spirit never holds desires that have the intention of harming others. It isn�t necessary when all possibilities are open to you. To look at your desires from a Spirit perspective, we will use the following exercise.
Exercise: Examination of Desires at Spirit Level
Begin by getting comfortable with some lined paper and a pen and your journal handy. On the lined paper, write out a list of the first eight desires that come to mind right off the bat. These are �realistic� desires for your life, or desires that you feel you can�t pursue for various reasons but would like to. These desires can even be very unrealistic. We will examine each desire at the Spirit level. Now, set your notes aside and relax. Imagine that you can see a place that is beautiful and tranquil and you see yourself standing in this setting. Everything has a quality of light, joy and peace.
Bring this image of yourself closer and closer, understanding that it is Spirit. Give yourself plenty of time to reach this other self, and allow the environment you see to change, as well as your imagined self. When you finally do arrive at this self, merge with it and see through his or her eyes. What do you see? You identity will be different here, so remain open and flexible. Get a feel for your new body and surroundings. This is yourself at a higher level of consciousness than you are used to operating at. You are temporarily expanding your self-definition to include this identity.
Now, look at your list of desires quickly, and one by one, explore how you perceive them at this level. For each desire, write down any feelings or modifications you make to this desire, such as any caveats you wish to add. For example, you wish to be very wealthy, but at this level the desire is modified to say that this wealth will not constrict you or tie you down. Complete the list and take a look at the changes you made. Did you find that you were able to connect to the desires more readily after making these changes to them? The final step is to rewrite the new, modified desires. After each desire�s paragraph, add �This now manifests for me through Spirit,� or �This now manifests at the emotional level for me through Spirit,� depending on whether or not you want to fully manifest the desire or explore it thoroughly first. Then, read each desire, with the added sentence, out-loud once. You might want to post this on your wall for future reference.
E6) Small changes in a person or idea, or even a feeling, can create drastic changes in how those things are expressed and in their state of being.
For example, a person who makes a small change in their behavior could potentially drastically change their life. A person who has many compulsive habits, for example, if they were able to give one of those habits up, might be able to envision a future where they are free of these habits completely and thus have the confidence to change their whole life. An idea can be changed in a small way that has drastic consequences for how it is expressed. A crushing and negative comment might be slightly reworded to be positive and reassuring without drastically altering the content of what was said, but avoiding a negative misunderstanding. A small change in a feeling can seem inconsequential, but can lead a person over an extended period of time to a very different quality of life.
For example, a person who is able to modify their feelings of distaste for someone slightly, might be able to enact a healing of that relationship eventually due to that small shift in feeling. Healing is often a collection of small victories, and the higher you go in the scheme of things toward Spirit and meaning, the more that is true. One carefully developed desire can radically alter your life�s course. The search for a particular type of meaning can alter the other searches for meaning in your life to improve the quality of your life very significantly. We have already discussed the idea of altering meaning by adding meaning in depth in previous chapters. We have also discussed how to tailor-make these changes, and how to add specific desires by tying them to a particular desire for a certain kind of meaning. In the following exercise we will discuss how to determine what small change will cause the largest improvement in an idea, feeling, situation or yourself.
Exercise: Maximum Benefit with Minimum Change
In this exercise we will look at a particular area of our life that we are dissatisfied with and analyze how we can improve it the most with the least amount of change to it. Begin by getting your journal and a pen ready and get relaxed. Think about an area of your life that is bothering you, or is in some way unsatisfactory. After identifying it, see it as an idea-bubble, as we have in past chapters. Enter the bubble and get a feel for the situation. What feelings and perceptions come up during this part of the exercise? These feelings should help you articulate exactly what it is about this situation that is bothering you on an emotional level.
Now, hold in your imaginary hands a small bubble. The bubble you are holding represents the minimum effort change you can make to the idea of this situation with the highest potential for positive change in the situation. This bubble will grow and glow with a yellow light, until it about the size of a bowling ball. When it has reached this point, the idea is complete. Merge with the bubble of yellow light, knowing that when it is assimilated into you, you will completely understand the nature of this change that you can make to the situation and you will be able to completely articulate it. Write down the information you get in your journal, and then follow up by taking action.
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