Mind Clearing for Energy and Success

Posted on by colinchenery

Six Steps to Gain Insight and Releasing Limiting Beliefs

Meditation, yoga and practices that help maintain a calm mind and heart are key disciplines to developing awareness, and help us tackle the mind at the root by deepening our identification with consciousness deeper than thought.

However, to deal with specific recurring thoughts or negative life patterns, it is useful to address specific outmoded beliefs and views. This can be liberating and enhance our capacity for growth and happiness, especially when we have some unconscious block to break through.

During the years I worked in therapy, one of the techniques I used was rebirthing which uses a circular pattern of conscious breathing that opens the mind up to memories and insights. It energises mind and body and can clear blockages.

One client suffered chronic fatigue and had noticed patterns of ill-health and self-sabotage in her career at specific times of opportunity and success. Cycles of feeling energised, excited and hopeful seemed always brief and repeatedly ended in disappointment and fatigue.

I will call her Chloe here. During a key session, Chloe’s breathing became more intense in waves until she wept deeply. Over much of an hour she moved through layers of healing as a result of re-living an event in her child hood that she had forgotten. She was age 4 or 5, standing on a train platform with her little sister and father. It was the end of a hot day out and they were all tired. She was repeatedly asking her father if she could carry the box of donuts he had bought for them all when they got home, but he wouldn’t let her.

She got increasingly upset until he reluctantly and impatiently thrust the box at her, saying “Alright, just be quiet and do not drop them!” Tired and sooky, she held on to the box as they waited on the hot platform for the train. When the train pulled to a stop, the doors opened. As they stepped into the train, Chloe felt the box slip from her hands and fall between the train and the platform, irretrievably on the stones below. Staring in shock and disbelief, she felt her father angrily grab her arm and pull her into the train as the doors shut. He was swearing under his breath and angrily stated the obvious, “I told you not to drop them! That is exactly why I didn’t want you to carry them. How could you do that? Unbelievable!”

Standing forlorn with her head down, Chloe felt herself as a child with a terrible sinking feeling in her chest and stomach. The child quietly wept, while the adult registered a deep decision to the effect of “I can’t be trusted” and “I can’t even trust myself”. As she felt the pain of the child, the life between then and that moment flashed before her. She registered a familiar bad feeling and saw how she had reinforced that decision and belief in countless ways that had limited her. The adult also wept and gradually realised she could now let it go.

This simple situation really brought home to me that it is not the adults version of a ‘serious’ event where some of our pain stems from. Some people come out of the worst situations with great survival strategies and positive convictions. At the same time simple situations like Chloe’s ‘donut moment’ can prove life impacting in deeply reinforcing a negative belief and unresolved anguish or pain.

It is not what happens to us, but the decisions we make as a result of what happens, that conditions the mind.

Chloe was able to release her sadness and connect with the pain at the level and mindset she remembered it being locked in. In our debrief she further came to terms with this old belief and forgave herself, her father and many situations and people since that time that she could see she had protected and reaffirmed that pain. She affirmed a new trust in herself. Months later she sent me a card to say her energy levels, positivity and motivation personally and professionally had improved significantly. A change had occurred and she felt more free with more choices.

It you have an ongoing hurt, recurring negative thoughts or specific negative outcomes try the following six-step exercise:

  1. Write a list of painful experiences in your life, especially in childhood, when you have a bit battered and bruised by life or had some momentous event occur and challenge you. Another approach here may be to first look at what obstacle keeps coming up in your life now and you want to break through.

  2. Take time to go through the past experience writing key thoughts and feelings that occurred at the time. Alternatively, do the same with the feelings and thoughts you get around a blockage you are experiencing now and, with some deep breaths and relaxation, find times earlier in your life when you felt the same (the focus is your inner feeling not the situation around you).

  3. At the time of your earliest experience, what basic belief or decision did this affirm to you about yourself or life in general? Don’t over-think it, but just note anything that comes to mind. Allow a flow of thoughts and make a list of decisions or beliefs, noting how each one makes you feel or the location, size and nature of feeling in your body.

  4. Now identify the one’s you still feel a ‘charge’ on that you may still be proving to be true at times in your life. Turn each negative thought into an “I” thought, such as “I am ….” or “I can’t ….” or “I’m not ….”.

  5. Affirm these are only beliefs that filter our perception and experience of life and flip each of the negatives into a positive affirmation or life affirming thought and belief. Like Chloe affirming “I am fully responsible, trustworthy and loved as I am”, or “I, Chloe can be trusted and completely successful with anything I really want”. Imagine the possibilities if the positive affirmation you had was applied to the most valued things in your life now.

  6. For each negative belief and associated feeling spend a week or more with the positive affirmation. Forgive yourself or any specific person associated with the past event and belief. For those really hurtful events, remember that forgiving someone is not necessarily making what happened okay. It is about letting it go so it doesn’t continue to negatively impact the quality of your consciousness and perceptions any more.

Use the positive affirmation as a mantra silently or out loud. You can write it down daily twenty times noting how you feel, until the emotional or body sense associated with it feels comfortable and real. You can also write little signs of the affirmations that really lift your energy and outlook, and leave them in places you like to be reminded (such as a bathroom mirror, fridge, car dashboard, work computer screen, etc.). Then go through any others in your list.

Taking stock and working with conditioned thoughts and beliefs for a period of time is an important stage in really understanding how our conditioned mind impacts our perceptions, experiences and outcomes. It empowers us to know we can identify and change this conditioning and discover more choices for ourselves and life circumstances.

Meditation is about getting beyond the thinking mind and beliefs, until every moment becomes a choice in the quality of awareness, consciousness and state of being. In the meantime, facing discomfort and negatives in ourselves is not only a huge source of maturity and growth but also creates new outcomes and possibilities in life.

Three Levels for Transforming Your Energy & Uplifting Your Consciousness

Posted on by colinchenery

The three states of mind and energy are explained in Vedic philosophy. Vedanta is one of six schools of Hindu philosophy that reflects teachings in the Upanishads. These ancient texts are often referred to in Yogic philosophy and many sections contain very specific insights and instructions on the science of consciousness and awakening. The cosmology of Vedic science includes the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and is embraced by traditional Aryurvedic philosophy and medicine of India. It includes three principles that can be very useful in understanding states of mind and developing a formula for transforming our energy, moods and emotions, and conditioning.

In Vedic cosmology, three principles or forces (called gunas) arose in the process of creation following the ‘big bang’. Undifferentiated primordial energy differentiated into tamas, inertia; rajas, energy; and sattva, law. It is the interaction of these forces that produced countless possibilities and combinations in the evolving universe. While pure consciousness remains forever undifferentiated, mind and body are products of the gunas which interact on a personality level as they do in the material universe.

Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita explains:

“It is the three gunas born of prakriti [the universal ground of the phenomenal universe and world] – sattva, rajas, and tamas – that bind the immortal Self to the body. Sattva – pure, luminous, and free from sorrow – binds us with attachment to happiness and wisdom. Rajas is passion, arising from selfish desire and attachment. These bind the Self with compulsive action. Tamas, born of ignorance, deludes all creatures through heedlessness, indolence and sleep.

Sattva predominates when rajas and tamas are transformed. Rajas prevails when sattva is weak and tamas overcome. Tamas prevails when rajas and sattva are dormant.

When sattva predominates, the light of wisdom shines through every gate of the body. When rajas predominates, a person runs about pursuing selfish and greedy ends, driven by resltelssness and desire. When tamas is dormant, a person lives in darkness – slothful, confused, and easily infatuated.” (14:5, 10-13)

So how does this apply to us?

Level 1

Tamas includes inertia, resistance and self justification, is characterised by the inner voice that says “Who cares?”, “What does it matter”, “ I can’t be bothered!”, “What does it matter if everything goes to hell!” and simply “I don’t care”. Also when we are in overwhelm and make situations and things bigger than ourselves, we often are up against our very own resistance. Tamas is the escapist in us that wants to avoid or run. Drowsiness, mental blocks and focusing on obstacles instead of solutions is another play of tamas.

Easwaran in his guide to the Gita called “Essence of the Bhagavad Gita” in explaining this cites not wanting to get up in the morning as a great warning that tamas is in ascension. He says it’s best not to weigh pro’s and con’s which plays into tamas’ hands, but flinging the covers away and leaping out of bed. It is Easwaran’s example of life consisting of small moments where we can transform inertia into energy – tamas into rajas – with decisiveness and action.

Level 2

Rajas enables us to get things done. When it predominates we are energetic, goal oriented, full of drive and passion. However, rajas is also the glue of attachment that can lock us into the pursuit of temporary pleasure, profit, status or power when imbalanced. When we can’t rest and get fixated on needed outcomes, when we are neglecting our inner selves and connection to life beyond ourselves, then balance is found in transforming rajas into sattva.

If we are not engaging our values and have a higher purpose in what we are doing then the task and the outcomes can only provide temporary satisfaction and fulfilment at best, while more often we can feel a sense of emptiness, stress and lack of fulfilment. When each day has meaning and purpose our intentions, state of mind and integrity in what we do become the art and fulfilment of our time and energy rather than just the outcomes. Transforming rajas doesn’t mean changing what we do as much as redefining a meaningful how and how we are doing it. An example is turning our intentions or ‘why’s’ into loving and compassionate ones. The ‘doing’ then becomes part of our own development and inner practice rather than being just a means to an ulterior end. We transform rajas by focusing how we are applying our convictions and values into our actions and adding value to others ahead of attachment to outcomes.

Level 3

In the sattvic state we are energised without being driven by time or self-centred attachments. People in this state are calm, clear, kind when under pressure, and compassionate in the face of provocation. Sattva is in play when we are of service, forgiving and moving through the bumps and bruises of relationships and life situations without being overly troubled or suffering. By stepping back from investment in outcomes and self-centred gains and focus on the quality and depth of purpose in why we are doing things. Sometimes obtaining this also requires looking at life balance.

Thus, the Gita provides a formula for transforming lower energies towards an active conscious life where forgiveness, forbearance, compassion and love come into play. In nature, the guna’s go through interconnected cycles according to natural laws without intervention of mind. As human beings we can utilise our will and higher mind to draw upon rajas to transform tamas, then transform rajas into sattva and balance. We can consciously utilise these dynamics for our own transformation. In his guide book, Easwaran clarifies Sattva is not the unified state of yogi’s but it is the foundation to move beyond guna’s into universal and unified consciousness.

The Wrap …

Each time we exercise decisiveness and will power to mobilise our inertia and refine our drives, we gain progressively ability to transform our own tamasic energy and consciousness independent of the energies and impacts around us.

Generally, we have rajasic minds – thinking a lot, working often stressed and performance oriented without conscious control of what the conditioned mind is really doing. We are planning, competing, achieving or coping and often frustrated.

In sattva we can calm the mind and gain control. The conscious inner journey shows us we don’t need to act on negative thoughts and states, nor even be affected by them. When we observe (without judgement or reaction) our resentments, jealousy, doubt and fears and not act on them, we can start to transform them into sattvic energy. Not acting on conditioned and negative thinking is definitely part of maturity.

The unconscious mind is chaos and tamasic – full of past clutter and often triggered into irrelevant or destructive tendencies. For most people, it is largely a dark unknown which is tamas. This energy keeps us swinging in cycles between the gunas and makes us fickle in loyalties and commitments. It is inner conviction, standing firm in our highest resolutions and values that steadies the mind and strengthens our ability to stand firm aside from negative inner states or difficult outer circumstances.

Conviction is a critical attribute to begin to consciously transform our energies regularly. Gradually unifying our desires and mind into a focused and harmonised energy, we can make our lives a conscious reflection of our highest truths and eventually a living work of art. Transforming tamas and rajas sets the stage for such a great accomplishment, of which sattvic mind and life is the launching pad.

Recommended reading:

Essence of the Bhagavad Gita – A Contemporary Guide to Yoga, Meditation and Indian Philosophy by Eknath Easwaran (The Blue Mountain Center for Meditation, Canada, 2011)

Also there are many good translations of the Bhagavad Gita itself. An excellent one for serious readers is:

God talks to Arjuna – The Bhagavad Gita – Royal Science of God-Realization by Paramahansa Yogananda (Self Realization Fellowship, Second Edition, 1999).

Photo credit: h.koppdelaney via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NDPhoto credit- h.koppdelaney via Visual Hunt : CC BY-ND