The Power of Connections (Blog)

[nklplnt]

Originally Posted by inverse Paranoid

Of course, that sort of focus might lead you to wonder what would happen if you did go up and talk to her now. And then you might get scared again. But the beauty of this focus is that you have the FREEDOM to focus on a different desire when your current desire seems painfully out of reach. And once you realize that you have the ability to stop the pain that may come from things like rejection (by changing your focus, not merely avoiding things that may lead to that pain), then the risk involved eventually becomes a moot point.

To inverse paranoid:

Your posts were an interesting take on things. But I'm not sure that this context is supportive for growth...

I quoted the above paragraph because it seems to hint at something which doesn't fit with the rest of the paradigm you were describing. The point you were trying to make was that your environment and your circumstances mean nothing and that your focus will affect growth more than your environment. This paragraph suggests that now that you understand that there is no risk in interacting with things that may lead to pain, that you should then take action and do things that you wouldn't have done before because you used to be afraid.
This is circular reasoning, and ill explain why.

This is how I understand what you described in your 2nd post

You wanted to be with an attractive girl.
You were afraid to approach her.
You changed your focus to recognize that you actually didn't want to approach her.
You were happy, because you were fulfilling that desire (not approaching her).

Now you realize that there is no risk in approaching her, you can just change your focus and you will be happy.

But then why the heck would you approach her at that point if you were already happy? If environmental/circumstantial things are not important, why the heck do you care whether or not she is your girlfriend?(or whatever, im just following the same example).

If we define growth in terms of increased alignment with Intelligence (Truth,Love,Power) then how does this help you grow? The way I see it this paradigm sees the ultimate goal of life as happiness, not growth.

To me I feel like you are just deluding yourself when you say that you are meeting your desire by avoiding pain. Like "HA! I'm so great because I don't want to talk to a hot girl and I don't have to! Aren't I just awesome because I don't have to summon the courage to get what I want? All I have to do is change my focus and I become happy!!!"

idk I feel like that's insane.

[ssandra]

Originally Posted by nklplnt

This is how I understand what you described in your 2nd post

You wanted to be with an attractive girl.
You were afraid to approach her.
You changed your focus to recognize that you actually didn't want to approach her.
You were happy, because you were fulfilling that desire (not approaching her).

Now you realize that there is no risk in approaching her, you can just change your focus and you will be happy.

Or;

You wanted to be with an attractive girl.
You were afraid to approach her
You changed your focus to recognize that you actually aren't afraid to approach her
You were happy and approached her and lived happily ever after....

[ssandra]

Although I agree that changing your inside focus is a stronger tool than changing your environment, at times changing the surroundings is the only thing you can do at that moment and that will propel you forward.

That is what happened to me when I moved to Mexico. I completely changed my environment, but still was shy, withdrawn, depressed etc. But... the change in environment and the removal of those people who were not helping me helped me be strong enough to change the inside focus as well.

So... neither is wrong or right (I know you didn't say that Angela Just expressing my own opinion here!) and it depends on each and every individual situation what is more appropriate and what do you have the strength to do.

Someone who is not doing anything with their lives, feels they are a failure etc may not be able to right away change their inside focus. But they may be able to clean up their room, one pile at the time.

Change inside --> outside changes --> being happy
Change outside --> inside changes --> being happy

Both are routes to the same destination. One may be a bit more scenic than the other or take a bit more time, but not everyone drives a car that can handle the shorter, but more difficult roads....

[Angela]

Originally Posted by ssandra

Both are routes to the same destination. One may be a bit more scenic than the other or take a bit more time, but not everyone drives a car that can handle the shorter, but more difficult roads....

I would say that one route is reliable, and the other is not.

If you make a shift in yourself towards what you want, being at cause, you can pretty reliably count on your environment occurring as supporting you in that. Supportive people and circumstances appear as if by magic.

If you make a shift in your environment, waiting for external changes to show up inside, you could wait forever -- many people do just that, moving from one job or relationship or country or seminar or technique to the next, waiting for the one that will *work.*

[ssandra]

Originally Posted by Angela

I would say that one route is reliable, and the other is not.

If you make a shift in yourself towards what you want, being at cause, you can pretty reliably count on your environment occurring as supporting you in that. Supportive people and circumstances appear as if by magic.

If you make a shift in your environment, waiting for external changes to show up inside, you could wait forever -- many people do just that, moving from one job or relationship or country or seminar or technique to the next, waiting for the one that will *work.*

True, and I agree with you.

As an addition though; sometimes you have to just start somewhere and the inside is not possible yet from where you are. Doing something (anything) different in your environment, even something as little as cleaning up your room, can set the rest of the personal development in action.

I don't think either one or the other alone will work. If you work your outside, but the inside stays the same, you get what you described. People endlessly searching for the "magic pill" or "guru with the answer".

If you change your inside it is very difficult to stay in the same external environment as well.. but if you do, it will become very easy to slip back into your old personality and behavior, I think.

[nklplnt]

Okay.

I was wrong.

Inverse Paranoid's reasoning makes sense.

Happiness is an important part of life, and IP seeing that his environment doesn't dictate his reaction is in alignment with the principle of Truth.

For the principle of Love, he is connecting with what he wants by changing his focus.

And Power, he is obviously exercising mental discipline in order to hold thoughts to connect with what he wants.

And just because he can create happiness doesn't mean that is all he will want to do. So that's where I stopped making sense in my first post.

Something else didn't feel right to me though, and I think I know what it is. It wasn't something he wrote that didn't make sense it was something that I didn't understand.

The fact that you can create the feeling of happiness without even changing your circumstances in the least only emphasizes that there has to be some greater purpose to life than maintaining happiness. It's just an emotional state after all.

Then again, maybe happiness is enough.

I have no idea. But what I do know is that if I'm ever going to find out, I'll have to become a hell of a lot more intelligent than I am now.

[inverse Paranoid]

Looking for a purpose to life tends to obscures the value and uniqueness of each individual moment. Rather than looking for a singular point of understanding to create the rest of your life from, what if you drew from the countless points of view available to you to create your life moment by moment? What if instead of seeking a purpose to life, you sought purpose in this very moment?

Of course, the purpose you'll find in any given moment is only as good as the focus you're holding at that time. So to truly live a fulfilling, moment-to-moment life, you'd have to teach yourself to focus in a way that fulfills you and learn to shift that focus as your moment-to-moment experience changes.

With that in mind, I'd like to devote the rest of this post to finding the understanding that will help us shift our focus, no matter the circumstances, and live a life as fulfilling as we'd like it to be. Because once we learn how to focus deliberately and experience the fullness of each moment, we won't need to seek out purpose. We will find everywhere around us. And once we discover that purpose is everywhere around us, we will free ourselves to tap into the total creative freedom that is our birthright.

Originally Posted by nklplnt

The fact that you can create the feeling of happiness without even changing your circumstances in the least only emphasizes that there has to be some greater purpose to life than maintaining happiness. It's just an emotional state after all.

There is more to the hunt than merely eating your kill. Yes you have the power to align with better feeling thoughts at any given time, under any given circumstances, and immediately reap the benefits of that alignment. But to say that maintaining happiness is the purpose to life would be like saying that remaining motionless is the purpose of gravity.

After all, feeling great is the natural state we return to in the absence of resistant thought, just as being motionless is the natural state we return to in the absence of physical movement. But these two forces of nature are inexorably linked because it is the movement that brings us to joy, and the journeying that sparks our desire to rest again.

Let's go deeper.

Gravity is the agent that allows us to run, skip, dance and play. It adds a whole new dimension to life on Earth. Without gravity, we'd all just be floating along.

The same goes for our ability to focus our thoughts. We have the ability to think whatever we want. The more our thoughts are in alignment with our desires, the better we feel. The more they're out of alignment, the worse we feel. If we couldn't feel worse, we'd never desire to feel better. If we couldn't experience what we don't want, we'd never bring clarity to what we do want.

In both cases, with nothing to bounce off of, we'd never experience the rush of taking a leap.

Gravity holds the physical world together so we have something to leap off of. Our habits of focus hold our inner world together so we have a platform to create from.

But gravity is about more than what we do to defy it. It is, in fact, what enables us to create a physical environment in the first place. And so we create our environment. And experience it. And from that experience make decisions about what we'd like to create differently.

The same goes with our focus. We choose our focus. Experience it (immediately in the form of our emotional response to it, and eventually in the form of how our continued focus manifests in the world around us). And then from that experience make decisions about what we'd like to experience differently.

Now that I've drawn some parallels between our inner world (our thoughts, focus and emotions) and outer world (environment, physical law, and movement), I want to use how we see each independently to see if we can gain a greater understanding of the other. I'll then close with a few questions that might lead us toward a better understanding of our purpose as we let them linger in our mind.

Seeing physical manifestations in the same light as emotions:
We often think of our physical manifestations as creations and our emotions as something else (more of a creative byproduct than a manifestation in and of themselves). But in truth our emotions play a much bigger role than that. They not only indicate how in alignment we are (by virtue of how good or bad we feel), but they guide us toward the alignment we're seeking (by virtue of what our experience of those emotions inspires us to desire next).

To bring this from the abstract into the present: The way you're feeling right now is not only an indicator of how in alignment you are in this moment, but a specially crafted emotion that serves you better than any other emotion could have served you in its place. Just like a river always finds the path of least resistance to the ocean, your emotions always point you toward the path of least of resistance to your desires.

Now, let's take that same logic and apply it to our environment.

Our physical world not only serves as an indicator of how in alignment our habits of focus are (by virtue of whether or not we have manifested the things we desire), but it guides us toward the alignment we're seeking (because everything we manifest and experience follows the path of least resistance to guide us toward our desires. They are, indeed, all specially crafted in a way that serves us better than any other manifestation or experience could in its place).

This realization alone is can be a great catalyst for releasing resistance. After all, if everything that you're manifesting and experiencing is serving you better than anything else could in this particular moment, what's the point of pushing against it? You can't get any better than the best. But don't kick yourself if you do decide to push against the best, because everything has the ability to improve. And your attention to how you'd like the moment to improve will serve you in bringing greater clarity and panache to your desires.

Seeing emotions in the same light as physical manifestations:
This correlation is a little tougher to notice, because our emotions change every time we shift our focus and don't really leave anything behind to label a creation. But it's a correlation worth drawing...

Just as you can take a snapshot with a camera and manifest a picture, you can hold a perspective with your thoughts and manifest an emotion. But since you can't capture an emotion the way a picture captures a moment, emotions are an art that exist only in real time. They are the artistic equivalent to a photographer who ditches the camera and instead captures the world around them through the eyes of their experience. They begin to see the world as their creation. Instead of taking self portraits, their art becomes the person they find staring back at them in the mirror.

Emotions are a creation that mirrors the creator. And when you recognize this you can then allow your emotions to guide your creations in real time. And you won't need to wait for the manifestation to know whether or not you're en route to rendezvousing with your desires.

Closing questions:
So what is your purpose in this very moment? Well, what are you creating in this very moment? What are your emotions mirroring back to you? And what is your experience of this moment causing you to desire next?

[inverse Paranoid]

Originally Posted by ssandra

As an addition though; sometimes you have to just start somewhere and the inside is not possible yet from where you are. Doing something (anything) different in your environment, even something as little as cleaning up your room, can set the rest of the personal development in action.

The inside is always possible, no matter where you are. All you have to do is think something and see how it feels. If it doesn't feel good, try thinking something different (or thinking about something else entirely). Congratulations! You're doing inner work! Nothing external needed. You can even do this with your eyes closed and both arms behind your back!

If you change your inside it is very difficult to stay in the same external environment as well.. but if you do, it will become very easy to slip back into your old personality and behavior, I think.

This is only true if your habits of focus are directed to the outside. If all you're doing is observing the world around you and trying to move toward the things you believe you want while avoiding the things you don't, then your environment is extremely important. But what if instead of trying to avoid unwanted things, you recognized that focusing on them doesn't feel good and use them as a cue to focus differently? What if you stopped seeing your old personality and behavior as the problem? What if they were actually part of the solution that's driving you toward becoming who you want to be?

(Editors note: I'm going to use the example of feeling shy, withdrawn and depressed that you mentioned earlier so that my words might have greater relevance. Please note that I am not trying to describe or diagnose your past situation, I'm merely painting a general picture of how shifting your focus in situations like this can help).

For example: Let's say that you're feeling shy, withdrawn and depressed and you want to feel differently. What do you have to start thinking, saying or doing to change this?

The answer is nothing. If you don't think, say or do anything, you'll start feeling better almost immediately.

The only reason you're feeling depressed is because you keep thinking thoughts that depress you, and saying things that bring you down, and doing things that are utterly unfulfilling. And part of the reason that you keep feeling depressed is because you're giving so much of your attention to the idea that you are shy and withdrawn.

You want to feel good about yourself and live a healthy life, but when you look at your life you see unfulfilling social connections and relationships. You think, "If only I could be less shy. Then I'd be able to change my environment and live a rich and interesting life with people I want to spend my time with." And so you try to take action to make that happen and feel even worse when you either fail to act, or fail to get the desired results.

But if you could just stop perpetuating the problem by speaking and acting from a place of out-of-alignment thought, then you could begin trying on different thoughts in search of a focus that IS in alignment with what you desire.

We're so innately creative that we believe we can find a way to succeed even when the odds are stacked up against it. But we're the ones stacking the odds up against ourselves. We're the ones telling ourselves, "I'm too shy and withdrawn to meet the kind of people I want to be around." And then saying, "OK, now that I've firmly established that I am way too shy to achieve the results I want, I'm going to try anyway."

We rarely get what we want that way because we've set ourselves up in a situation where we'd need a near miracle to succeed. And the reason miracles so rarely happen is because the things we label miracles are stifled by our doubt long before evidence of their existence begins to manifest.

I say, take the reigns of your focus and start stacking the odds in your own favor. Start believing that you can focus your way into such certainty that it would take a miracle for you to NOT get what you want. And make achieving that level of focus your goal.

Because every time you improve your focus, you increase your ability to release resistance. Just as a plane can travel much faster than a car (because it encounters less resistance at higher altitudes), you'll be able to reach places you never would've believed possible when you thought your only means of travel was by land.

If you can learn to make your achievement of something virtually inevitable—purely through focusing your thoughts—you'll never be slowed down by an uncooperative environment again. Because it's not our environment that slows us down, it's our resistance to it.

Release the resistance, and you'll find yourself soaring again in no time.

[slumberland]

that juggling video is painful for me to watch because it is so true, and I have spent so much time trying to fight it... or thinking I should be able to fight it... but what an important thing to remember over and over again.
Thank you Steve, it's a very compassionate obvious point - because it acknowledges that we are vulnerable and says be kind to yourself, take the nice way out...

[yogi]

Originally Posted by nklplnt

Okay.

I was wrong.

Inverse Paranoid's reasoning makes sense.

Happiness is an important part of life, and IP seeing that his environment doesn't dictate his reaction is in alignment with the principle of Truth.

For the principle of Love, he is connecting with what he wants by changing his focus.

And Power, he is obviously exercising mental discipline in order to hold thoughts to connect with what he wants.

And just because he can create happiness doesn't mean that is all he will want to do. So that's where I stopped making sense in my first post.

Something else didn't feel right to me though, and I think I know what it is. It wasn't something he wrote that didn't make sense it was something that I didn't understand.

The fact that you can create the feeling of happiness without even changing your circumstances in the least only emphasizes that there has to be some greater purpose to life than maintaining happiness. It's just an emotional state after all.

Then again, maybe happiness is enough.

I have no idea. But what I do know is that if I'm ever going to find out, I'll have to become a hell of a lot more intelligent than I am now.

Hi nklplnt. I am able to find a happy medium between the two end-points. What I can change about myself, I should. What I can change about my environment, I should. What I can't change, I am happy to accept.

[ssandra]

Originally Posted by inverse Paranoid

The inside is always possible, no matter where you are. All you have to do is think something and see how it feels. If it doesn't feel good, try thinking something different (or thinking about something else entirely). Congratulations! You're doing inner work! Nothing external needed. You can even do this with your eyes closed and both arms behind your back!

(I read the rest of your post as well, just quoting this part for space saving sake.. )

I agree with you that inside work is right now, always possible for me. Right now, no matter what the circumstances, I know I can handle everything that comes at me internally.

However; back at that moment, I didn't believe I could change anything internally, so therefor I couldn't.

I needed the outside change to "kick start me awake" into truly understanding that I could change things inside myself. That I wasn't confined to my previous identity of being shy and depressed.

[inverse Paranoid]

Originally Posted by ssandra

I agree with you that inside work is right now, always possible for me. Right now, no matter what the circumstances, I know I can handle everything that comes at me internally.

However; back at that moment, I didn't believe I could change anything internally, so therefor I couldn't.

I needed the outside change to "kick start me awake" into truly understanding that I could change things inside myself. That I wasn't confined to my previous identity of being shy and depressed.

Of course. I'm all for doing anything you can to help yourself feel better. I think you handled your situation perfectly because, after all, it did get you to where you are today!

Much Love! <3