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Mind Magic for Change
A talk given by David Truman on 4/12/09
"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go"
-- The Beatles
• How change happens
• Where positive and negative change come from
• Consider the source
• Choosing your station
• Plan B
• Where your mind goes, your life flows
• Positive "change" is a return to our natural condition
• The fork in the road
• A question for you to ponder
Today we're going to talk about change, and how we use our minds to create either positive or negative change in our lives. And I'll be using some ideas from Jose Silva, the man who developed Silva Mind Training.
How change happens
Silva says, "Life does not happen to us, it happens through us." Our lives are first composed by us in our minds -- in our thoughts, visions, and beliefs. Then, we simply enact the script we've written for ourselves, and that creates our experience.
Silva further explains that there are three steps by which we create our lives:
Invision (as in inner vision, or envision): the thoughts and dreams that we formulate in our minds. It's like creating a blueprint for a house on paper before it is built.
Decision: the choice to either build or not build (do or not do) what one has conceived in the mind.
And finally,
Go-To: to go to manifest what that blueprint said, bring it to life.
So you have Invision (design in preview mode); Decision (yes or no; go or no-go); and Go-To (manifest, bring into life, implement, do).
Where positive and negative change come from
Of course, changes can be for the better or for the worse. We all know that. How many people have you heard say they wish they could be the same loving, trusting person they were ten years ago? Our lives can be a stairway to heaven, a slippery slope into pain and disappointment, or anything in between. It's all a matter of choice. And choice starts in the mind.
Changes for the better. Upward changes come from your heart, and from your soul. Your soul knows what is good and true, and what is truly best for you and for everyone. Therefore, upward changes come from following the natural inclinations, desires, and visions of your heart and soul. These natural inclinations keep bubbling inside you, no matter what course you follow in your life. Because of that, choices that grate against your soul nature will always bother you, however long you stick with them.
Your soul is constantly trying to manifest. It is impressing upon you from within your desires, visions, and fantasies. It is "nudging you to greatness," as Silva would say. In other words, your soul would have you be great, and manifest great things. Your soul would have you be beautiful. And its visions are about that. They are visions of loveliness -- your loveliness, to be exact. Your goodness, your beauty, your love, your native intelligence, etc. This is what your soul has in mind for you.
Changes for the worse. Downward changes come from egomind. Egomind is a reaction against the true beauty and intelligence that God created in human beings. Egomind opposes your soul's true desires, squelches your loving impulses, argues against your selfless inspirations, dims your intelligence, and mocks your spiritual wisdom. It calls love and risk dangerous, generosity unwise, and rightness hypocritical. When you heed the egomind, the result is downward changes. Downward changes are the manifestation of egomind's reactions to your own beauty.
Consider the source
When people want to make a major life decision, they will normally consult with someone, but they will choose their consultants according to what they wish to do. They already know who will approve their plan and who will disapprove it. If they want it disapproved, of course they will choose the consultant who will do that. And if they want it approved, they will choose the opposite type of consultant.
In our lives, we have to consult either egomind or spirit about our decisions. In either case, it's easy to predict what the answer will be.
If you asked McDonald's if they were in favor of building a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the same street, their answer would be no. And of course, that is a perfectly predictable answer. Consider the source. What else could McDonald's say, when the new KFC restaurant would directly compete with them?
Similarly, if we consult egomind, it will put the kibosh on all good things, and give approval to all bad things. Egomind will never approve of the spirit's plans and desires. It is inherently against the beauty that the soul would create. Therefore, to the extent that you allow egomind to rule, your spirit will be suppressed. Just as McDonald's will not build a Kentucky Fried Chicken, your ego will not build the beautiful world, life, and relationships that your heart and soul envision. Not ever. Only the spirit will do that.
There will never be a time when you can consult with your ordinary egomind, and get its permission to do what you truly need as a soul to be free and happy.
The only exception is when it's setting you up for a trick -- when it knows that it can send you in with sufficient unpreparedness and resistance to create a disaster out of your beloved dream. In that case, the answer is, "Yes! Go ahead. Walk into the booby trap. Walk into pain." Sabotage? Self-defeat? Yes, because egomind knows that this failure will leave a mark that will cause you to avoid beauty in the future, and to conclude that beauty hurts and is dangerous. That's where songs like "Love Stinks" come from.
Obviously, practice doesn't always make perfect. It depends who's your coach -- spirit or ego. If you practice with ego as your guide, it will create endless pain and disappointment. But perfect makes perfect. That you can count on. God, your heart, your spirit, your true mind, make perfect. And you know what? They don't make anything else.
So, if you want true beauty, don't consult egomind. To allow beauty in your life you must walk away from ego, and not look back.
Choosing your station
Your life is the result of your inner allegiances -- either to egomind and its thoughts and promptings, or to your heart-soul thoughts and promptings. Silva talked about how we can tune the frequency of our mind, just as we tune the frequency in our radios. The station you tune your radio to will blather its content, whether it be a talk show, music, or whatever. So you have to tune for what you want to hear.
Now, as we tune our mind, we tune into different sources of creative ideas. Egomind operates on certain frequencies, and the soul on higher frequencies.
Egomind, because it reacts to beauty, is largely censorious or destructive in its thought content. It attacks your heart-soul visions with fear thoughts and doubts. It tells you why love, or a good life, won't work. It puts the kibosh on the genuine thoughts and movements of your spirit.
If you listen to egomind, and dwell on fears and concerns, then when you go about your life, you will (consciously or unconsciously) bring into manifestation that which you fear.
Olympic trainers know this. They do not permit the athlete in training to visualize failure. When the athlete meditates, he meditates on success. And when he gets to the arena, he visualizes victory. That is what will carry him to victory, you see?
And similarly, you know full well that if you enter into a situation having rehearsed fear in your mind, you will fail. You belch what you eat. There is no way that you can rehearse fear, angst, and all that in your mind without putting the kibosh on your adventures to come. Your gloomy visions will be projected naturally on the scene of your life.
But if you have meditated on beauty, that lovely vision will carry you through into beauty. Because beauty has already been created, you see? In your mind. Success or failure, beauty or pain, is created in the mind. The end result is only an outworking.
Plan B
Egomind is more in the destruction business than in the creation business, really. As we said, it is out to obstruct, censor, and destroy your goodness. Nonetheless, egomind has its own build plan. We call it "Plan B."
As egomind attacks the spiritual plans you have in your heart -- your dreams, visions, and desires -- it also suggests an alternative plan. Something to do instead of what comes naturally to you as a soul. If the true, honest, excellent life that the spirit would create is Plan A, then the dissatisfying and painful life that egomind would create is Plan B.
We could call Plan B "the Meanwhile Plan," because it postpones the fulfillment of the soul's wishes. Egomind is always pushing our heart's dreams into the future, and avoiding or sabotaging them in the present.
For example: Jenna deeply and truly loves Gary, but she is convinced that before she can commit to him, she needs to travel the world, meet other men, explore life a little, etc. So she goes on a world tour that lasts two years. She plans to hook up with Gary when she gets back, but near the end of two years, she starts up a business in London, which consumes all her time. She decides that she better wait another two years, until the business is well-established, before getting involved with Gary. Because she needs to focus -- of course. If Jenna keeps this up, she will spend the rest of her life doing something else instead of love.
This is how egomind builds an empty and unfulfilling life. It avoids and procrastinates on the opportunities that the heart would naturally seize, and it pursues its own idea of an "ideal" life.
Perhaps a less dramatic example, but a very common one, is how we build space into the relationships we already have by hurting our loved ones. Those wounds are in fact postponements in themselves, because people take time to heal from being hurt. For example, we know that if we create a big negative incident with a friend, we'll be on the outs with them for a while. Maybe not four years, like Jenna. Maybe four days, or four weeks, but we will be out for some time. Trauma creation in the context of relationship is a way of buying time, and building walls.
This is ego's method for sabotaging the dreams of the spirit -- Plan B. If love is undesirable to egomind, sabotage is desirable. If sabotage is effective, time is bought.
By these means, egomind makes beautiful things seem difficult; and eventually, almost impossible. Of course, beauty is never actually impossible for us. But it can sure seem that way. And if we believe that, the game is as good as lost. That is ego's build plan.
Where your mind goes, your life flows
Silva says, and I think beautifully, "Where your mind goes, your life flows." So, if our life is not what we want it to be, we need to go back to the mind, and look at what we are creating there. They call this "going back to the drawing board."
Will we have to struggle to conceive a better plan? No. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says, "The mind naturally flows to fields of greater happiness." Isn't that beautiful? The mind will naturally go to bliss, to truth, to rightness, to love. These things are inherent in us. Just as a homing pigeon flies home if given the freedom to do so, we fly to beauty, love, and goodness -- as soon as we stop putting the kibosh on ourselves, as soon as we stop suppressing our spirit.
The Beatles knew this when they sang, "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering where it will go..." In that song the rain represents ego's kibosh (or restriction) on beauty. "It stops my mind from wandering where it will go."
When the Beatles wrote that song, they were already multi-millionaires. They had anything a man could want. But it wasn't that simple -- they also had business. They had obligations, they had paparazzi to deal with, and they had big pressure. It's big pressure when you're at the top.
Obviously, there was plenty of rain that could get in. It was like living on the coast, in the zone of horizontal rain. The big ego kibosh is ever threatening in a pressured life. It looms around every corner, every turn, every incident. Bang, bang, bang. The kibosh is there to take advantage of every misfortune, pressure, and stress in the mind. Every error, mistake, or misstep. Bang! The kibosh. And then the egomind says: "Look at that! See what happened? See? I told you that life is hell, that love is dangerous, that happiness is impossible. I told you..."
How can the mind wander where it will naturally go, into Maharishi's predicted fields of bliss, if the kibosh is allowed? We have to fix the hole where the rain gets in, so that we can go there. When we fix that hole, we are like a helium balloon, floating, flying into the vast blue sky. Or a heliotrope. Helios means the sun. Heliotropic is that which grows toward the sun. When we get rid of the kibosh, we are heliotropic, always moving toward the light.
Positive "change" is a return to our natural condition
When we remove the ego-mind's kibosh, our spirit can get to work on creating a beautiful life. Then, change happens effortlessly. People think that change requires struggle. But true positive change is not a struggle. "Changes are not made, changes are allowed," says Silva. Positive changes are the unrestricted manifestation of your true Self: your love, your genius, your sensitivity, your passion, your beauty. That's why, when you go through a positive change, you feel so much more like yourself -- because you are!
God's way is easy. It's struggling against God's way, or the natural way of the soul, that is difficult. It is difficult to live in a way that does not satisfy the heart.
So when people say, "Well, I'm going to try very hard to do this," my question is: "Why? Why would you go and mess it up like that, when for you, goodness is natural." And they respond, "Well, I'm going to try very hard to be natural, then."
What is this -- Cover Girl's new "Natural Look" makeup collection? No, that's not natural. Here's a hint: If it costs more than a hundred dollars and it takes more than two hours to put it on, it's not natural.
Natural is what happens instantly, and effortlessly. It flows like a mighty river, like a spring. The struggle is in resisting the flow. Have you ever tried to stop a fast-flowing garden hose with your thumb? Then you know: the struggle is in not flowing. And certainly, when you get into the arena of love, and egomind starts to attack it, the pain is in the resisting of love, and not in the loving. That's obvious enough.
The fork in the road
So there are two ways. There is the way of your heart and soul, which is God's way. And then there is no way, which is the egomind's way. The egomind's way is no way because it will try to sabotage any beauty and goodness that you create in your life. It will attack any relationship you try to build, any truly spiritual life, any joy.
The only solution is to not allow egomind to be the decision-maker in your life. You have to consult your heart and soul: its visions, inspirations, dreams, knowing, fantasies, and desires. And do not consult egomind about your plan, because ego will make it hard. It will make it impossible, practically.
A truly spiritual life, and a truly beautiful life, is about letting go and letting flow. So let go of all the egomind's nightmare visions -- the fear, the insecurity, the weakness. Do not create those visions. Silva says: Let your mind be a source for solutions, not a creator of problems.
Do not let your mind be the kibosher of your dreams. Don't let it. Don't indulge your mind in such a way as to create fear thought, to enforce no's, to attack beauty with problems, considerations, and concerns of all kinds. Don't invest in that negative mind junk anymore. All that stuff is just lowering you down to the frequency where no good can be.
If you want peace, if you want joy, do not marry the joy kibosher, the editor, the naysayer, the doomsayer on joy, the preventer -- in short: the egomind. Because your destiny will be determined by what you indulge in in your mind.
A question for you to ponder
So, the question is: what are you creating? What is happening in your life, day by day? The mind is a creative engine. It is always creating. So what are you creating? And what would you like to create?
Would you create a new version of past failures and disappointments? It was fear, indeed, that created those past misfortunes. And fear will certainly re-create them in the present, if you let it. Therefore, if you want better, don't indulge in fear. Say no to the visions in which your future is being drawn on the blackboard. And say yes to your heart and soul visions, in which your future is being created on the whiteboard.
And it will be created beautifully on the whiteboard. Beauty will manifest in your life, as long as you fix the hole where the rain gets in.
Let's play that tune again, from the top.
- click here to play audio -
Fixing a Hole
-- The Beatles
I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go
I'm filling the cracks that ran though the door
and kept my mind from wandering
where it will go
And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong I'm right
where I belong I'm right
where I belong
See the people standing there
who disagree and never win
and wonder why they don't get in my door
I'm painting a room in a colorful way,
and when my mind is wandering
there I will go
Hey hey hey
And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong I'm right
where I belong I'm right
where I belong
Silly people run around
they worry me and never ask
me why they don't get past my door
I'm taking the time for a number of things
that weren't important yesterday
and I still go
I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go
where it will go
I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go
by David Truman Please feel free to share copies of this article.
We only ask that you mention its source.
- LoveTrust -
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