Chapter 3 : Learning from Experiences

This is the part two of an article dealing with spiritual and psychological aspects of your daily life experience. In case you have not read part one first it is recommended to do so because this article is assuming that you have read it first. Part one was about the topics "Positive Manifestation" and "Breaking Control Dramas".

All experiences we have in life are an opportunity to grow. The reality we inhabit is the optimum environment for achieving rapid growth, it provides us with exactly those experiences from which we can grow from most efficiently. Before we can grow successfully we first have to gain more understanding about the reasons why we experience certain situations or events in life. If we do not understand these underlying reasons, it is very likely that we will experience the same situation again on a more elevated and stressful level, so that it becomes easier to see what we're supposed to learn from it. Blocks to growth are listed on the right hand side of the chart : Fear, anger, lying, stress, ...

Blaming others for having been deceived by them

Once you understand that you manifest all circumstances and experiences in your life, you also have to take responsibility for allowing others to deceive you. As long as you are lacking the understanding or the willingness to admit that you have been deceived, you are a willing participant in the game of deception. The only way out is to gain more understanding and transcend the experience.

Honesty without wisdom is negative

Being brutally honest to another person can hurt them and thus hinder their growth. Even though honesty is part of the positive path it requires to be combined with wisdom in order to understand how much truth the other person can handle and put it to use for their personal growth.

Expectation and anticipation

Having an expectation about a certain outcome leads you to predetermine the end result. Even if that is only through you thoughts it is still part of a control drama. In this case you are not only wasting your own energy but you are actually blocking this outcome from manifesting by putting out an energetic charge through your expectation.

Polarity of needs, wants and desires

Proclaiming something as your need attaches it with a control drama because you now have to control events to fulfill this need. So needs are generally part of the negative path. With a desire no attachment or control is involved, if your desire is fulfilled that's fine if it isn't thats fine to. There is no resistance the outcome. Wants can be either positive or negative, depending on the object wanted and the circumstances of the situation. You can determine the state of consciousness of a person by observing the way they use those three terms. It is always easier to see certain aspects and flaws in other people than in ourselves. One reason for other people being in our life is because we need them as a reflection on ourselves to discover issues we need to work on.

Subconscious and conscious mind

The Subconscious mind holds our pain, trauma, memory, knowledge, intent, instinct and experience. It is where our past programming is stored.

The conscious mind is where we reason, make decisions and choices. It is in the present state.

Any thoughts about events from the past are memories from the subconscious mind being passed on to the conscious mind so it can work on them.

The conflict most people experience is that their conscious mind is on the positive path but the subconscious has a lot of negativity stored in it and keeps bombarding the conscious mind with it so that the negativity can be transformed. Transformation can only happen through understanding which leads to growth and healing and makes the negativity go away. Since most people don't like processing negativity they build up a wall to shield themselves from it but from time to time there is a leak in the wall.

Breaking down this wall is a process everybody should go through because avoiding it for your entire life can cause uncontrolled volcanic eruption of negative emotions causing emotional breakdowns or outbursts or even long-term mental illness.

Self-love and recognition

If you have not learned to love yourself you will keep looking for recognition from other people to fill this inner void. People who feel like they have not received recognition and acceptance from their parents tend to become over-achievers and develop self-injuring behaviour like becoming a workaholic.

Physical house cleaning

Everybody has memories attached to objects they have in their house. These memories can be thoughts and feelings related to the time when you attained the object or the person you received it from. Whenever you find yourself having negative memories about an object in your house get rid of the object otherwise it will constantly cause you having negative thoughts. Especially when you do this for example once a year and you remove several objects at once from your house you will feel a noticable emotional upliftment from doing so.

Limiting thoughts

Since you are what you think and you become what you are exposed to, it is important to choose your own thoughts wisely and to pay attention to the way other people influence your thoughts. By accepting limiting thoughts of other people as truth you are limiting yourself in what you can achieve.

All experiences are a reflection of what is going on inside of you

It is our consciousness and our entire energy that attracts events and circumstances into our life. If you experience something dramatic you should ask yourself which aspect of you brought that event into your life. Usually this will lead you to a past experience that has unreleased trauma attached. The general rule is that everything you put out into the world comes back to you - most of the time with such a large time delay that you do not see any connection between cause and effect. So every thought and every action matters, it matters even more if there is strong intent and emotion attached to the thought or the action

Synchronicity

Synchronicities are events and circumstances which miraculously manifest in your life. You meet the right people at the right time just when you needed them. Non-spiritual people simply call these events a coincidence but once you develop a sense for synchronicities you will find that they are one way of universe aligning with a desire you have put out earlier. The tricky part is to make sure that the desire you have put out is in alignment with your life's purpuse because if it is not then synchronicities might open doors for you which get you off track because your desire was off track.

Distinguishing between emotions and intuition

Negative emotions like hate, anger and fear are blocking the access to your intuition. If you have a vested interest to cause a particular outcome for an event you are relying on your emotions not on your intuition. Intuition is always clear and has no desired outcome. Emotions as such are not good or bad, you should always try to understand why you are feeling a particular way because that is a way to heal wounds from the past. Emotions without understanding can become consuming and destructive. Choices you make while feeling negative emotions usually lead to negative outcomes. As long as you are not sure if your inner guidance is based on your intuition or your emotions rather trust it on responses on what you should not do than on responses on what you should do.

Exercises

• Forgiveness : Any time a negative thought about a past experience enters your conscious mind this means that the memory of this experiences is not healed yet. The easiest way to heal it is by saying out loud that you forgive the other person and yourself for what happened. For example : "I forgive this person for this incident" and "I forgive myself for having taken part in this incident and for not knowing any better at that time". You will have to repeat this several times and it is of major importance that you understand and accept that this experience was part of your past but that with your new awareness you are now ready to let go of the experience. 
• Release : Whenever you find yourself in a situation where negative emotions are triggered - this could be that you are getting caught in a control drama or you simply get angry at another person - simply step back mentally from the situation and repeat to yourself the word "Release" over and over. This is not about mindlessly repeating a word but what is important is your understanding of the situation and your ability to change it by shifting your consciousness. The word simply helps you to facilitate the inner shift. 
• Affirmations : Affirmations are mental tool to reprogramm the beliefs which shape your future. The most powerful affirmations are about being so they should always start with "I am ...". After you have clearly stated your affirmations you should release them and trust in the process that those affirmations which are in alignment with your path will manifest. Writing down your affirmations is more powerful than just thinking about them, verbalizing your affirmations out loud is more powerful than writing them down.

Lessons and challenges

The skeletons in your consciousness will only be revealed to you, if you are ready to see them and have the tools to deal with them. This entire reality construct is a divine machine, it is intending to nudge you to grow and expand your consciousness but it will not confront you with problems that you can not resolve.

Learning the lesson

If you hear, you accept. If you see, you belief. If you do, you understand. If you see it and believe it, you have knowledge. Actually doing it, results in wisdom.

Chapter 4 : Manifesting your thoughts

Before being able to manifest your thoughts you first need to break down the wall between your subconscious and your conscious mind as described in earlier. Then you have to establish communication with your superconscious mind also often refered to as higher self. Through your superconscious mind you can get access to a higher level of wisdom and insight. Opening up this communication comes automatically when you have decided to walk the positive path and grow spiritually. You can support this process e.g. through meditation and maintaining a state of inner peace as often as possible. The more you improve the communication between your conscious and your superconscious mind, the more you will develop intuition and inner knowing.

Right or wrong, good and bad

We are taught from an early age about what is right or wrong. When looking at our life experience it is often the situations where we experienced pain that pushed us to a higher level of awareness and understanding because the experience forced us to pay attention to an aspect of life that did not matter to us before. Even though this should not imply that pain is "good" it is often a catalyst to trigger positive change in a persons life. Most people who have attained a certain amount of spiritual wisdom will confirm that it took a negative experience that shook them up from their daily life and that in hindsight they learned to appreciate the experience. So judging certain actions or circumstances as wrong or bad might just be a sign that you are lacking the insight about the potential for growth they have embedded within them. The most efficient way to fix unpleasant circumstances in the world by being centered and present in the current moment. Being positive and loving will change your immediate surrounding automatically and this will have an effect on the people in your environment. Trying to change other people and their behaviour involves initiating a control drama and will take you off the positive path.

Steps to manifesting your thoughts

• Step 1 : Accept that anything and everything is possible
• Step 2 : You must be able to think it
• Step 3 : You must believe that you can achieve it to manifest
• Step 4 : You must have faith that it will occur

Limiting thoughts and preprogrammed beliefs from your subconscious mind will become a block to the manifestation process. Belief in your ability to achieve can only come through understanding of the process and it takes time to build it up. Faith is about having patience and letting go of expertations or anticipations. It is important to focus on the end result not on every little detail along the way to it because focusing on the details is limiting to the manifestation. Manifestation is blocked if there is a breakdown in any of the 4 steps. We all manifest experiences according to our present state of polarity, growth, healing and balance. All experiences are provided to us in order to provide us with the opportunity to make choices which increase our growth, healing and balance.

The meaning of life

In our search for the meaning of their individual life experience many people started out looking for answers in religion but over time they got disillusioned by religion. Then they turned to science but science also did not have an answer explaining the meaning of life. Finally the path of material gratification and self-fulfillment was supposed to give them a sense of meaning and provide them with happiness but also this path was not really providing people with what they were seeking. As a consequence of all three approaches having failed we are now experiencing a spiritual conscious evolution where people are looking for answers in material like it is presented in this article. The best way to see if this approach is suitable for you is by trying it out in your daily life and see if it works.

The content of this article is based on a 4 part lecture by Ivan Stein. The lecture is available in the Resources section.