Spiritual Metamorphosis

Taking charge of your life: directions for personal development learning
© 2006 Spiritual Metamorphosis

Your life is created from four aspects of the self: what you think, what you feel, what your body contributes (action) and from an inner wisdom often called the Higher Self.
We call these four aspects the Whole Self Team.

Your life is also created from choices you make to bring about the life you want. This ability to make a choice and then bring it into being is a great human gift.

Choices may be conscious or unconscious. To create a successful life you must make all your choices conscious - and they must be your own: not what others would want for you or what is generally considered a “right” choice.

Unconscious choices mean that you are operating from an unexamined default mechanism in the brain. So, for example, you may eat “that” food without really thinking whether you like it, want it, want it now. The subconscious mind operates from default mechanisms, mostly laid down in childhood or youth. This is fine if the choice laid down in the subconscious is healthy and productive. But unconscious choices are dangerous if the default mechanism is set to expect misery, poverty, ill health, loss or deprivation. It is just as bad when other people are making choices for you. When unsuitable unconscious expectations or choices create your circumstances, life feels out of control or you feel confused and paralysed.

Taking charge of your life means that you first need to take time out to identify what makes you uncomfortable. By doing this you can see the flip side: what you really want. If your job is boring, you desire stimulation; if your partnership is too dependent, you want independence and so on.

Bring your unconscious choices to awareness by looking at the reality you have around you. Then ask yourself why you are allowing this to happen, where you first gave the right of choice to someone else or why you are fearful of being more clear about what you want. Once you become aware of a faulty choice, a counterproductive feeling or thought, it is then possible to heal or reprogram that blockage using inner work such as visualization and meditation. You can clear the fears, disentangle from others expectations, make conscious goals and so on. The more healing you do, the more it is possible to align yourself to your inner wisdom.

Often it is useful to use a professional to help you do this work, but it is also possible to self heal. Self-healing can be a tool in taking charge of your life.

In summary the following steps are necessary to take charge of your life:

Observe your reality truthfully. What is good about it? What do you want to change?

Remember that this reality has been created by you, and you alone! Yes, others are helping you to manifest this – for better or for worse – but only you can change what you think, feel, and do to change an unpleasant reality.

Rome was not built in a day. But each day was necessary to the building of it. So the first step to taking charge of your life is to decide what one thing you want to change NOW. Define what you don’t like and decide to take charge.

Keep your eye on how you are building your desired life today. Don’t wait for tomorrow or a year’s time. Make that step small and easily achieved. Monitor the effects.

Having made the choice to take charge of one small aspect of your life, check out that your “whole team” is supporting you.

The whole team

The mental body

Your conscious thoughts are often governed by your unconscious mental position. “This is the mental “body.”) Fortunately your mental self – the problem-solving aspect of you – can examine your mental body.

When making a choice to change, ask yourself whether your mental body’s old beliefs are helping your choice or not. Do your current expectations, beliefs and thoughts support the change you want? For example, if you want to change partners, do you believe that relationship difficulties can be worked through, or do you think they are always difficult? If the latter, your choice of a new partner will not lead to the desired peace you seek – unless of course you have learned the skills to improve relationship.

Check your mental slant generally. Do you think you are victim to others or that you can’t choose something because it would cause hurt or disapproval? What attitudes do you have that feed your negative beliefs? For example, do you believe you are too stupid, too slow, too poor, too busy, too unlovable, to be able to create the change you want? Similarly, do you subscribe to popular assumptions that can well be changed, such as: ‘love is pain,’ ‘women are discriminated against, ’ ‘older people can’t find partners.”

If so, change your belief first and foremost. Use visualizations or affirmations to do so.

Your emotional self

Your negative thoughts do not always show up as “thoughts” – they may show up emotionally. When you think of making a change, do you feel fear, anxiety or despair? Are you scared of the possible consequences of taking charge of your reality? When a negative emotion is attached to change, it is likely you will not want to “believe’ change is possible. You will procrastinate and probably avoid doing further inner work.

It is essential that your heart fully support your desired change. Don’t kid yourself and deny fears.

If you sense that you will be scared to change, such as the new responsibilities or consequences attached to the change, clear the fear.

Clear fear regularly until you gain or regain your inner calm and conviction. Again visualization or emotion-releasing techniques will be needed.

The physical self

It is essential that you make sure your mental and emotional selves are in agreement before you act. But at some point action is essential.

So suppose you want more physical order in your life: you will not get it simply by believing that order is possible, and clearing your fears of being untidy, lazy and disorganised. One day you will actually have act. Your body will need to be involved. And you will need to “ask” the body if it can support your decision. Are you actually fit enough to clean out your house in one day as you plan? If not, what amount of physical activity can your body comfortably support? Similarly, you may need to undergo physical strengthening to develop new leisure possibilities; you may need extra vitamins for high-stress projects and so on.

The proof of the personal development pudding is that you are able to act to get what you want in an effective way. Your body must be as capable as the rest of you.

The higher self

Your higher self is The Source for how to handle problem. It does not make choices for you. So asking the question: “What am I meant to do?” will not be answered. But once you make a choice based on your understanding of what your mental, emotional and physical selves want and need, you want to get there in the quickest and most graceful fashion, the higher self will provide the answers. So for example, you may find your physical body says it wants more nourishment. In that case your higher self can often suggest what specific nourishment might be helpful.

Develop a communication system with your higher self and use it as part of your decision making process.

The above steps are very simple.

Unfortunately, as you carry them out, you will find obstacles in your journey.

The journey might well look like this:

You will begin with enthusiasm – especially as you work your visualizations.

You will notice an inner change – a feeling of lightness and expansion.

Then you will hit a wall – a wall of resistance to continuing the change. You will contract and this will show up in a manner that you will know well. Here are some possibilities:

You will become despairing or depressed at how much needs to be done or what is not yet achieved.

You may get sick in a minor way.

You will distract yourself by indulging in your favourite poison – drugs, alcohol, cynicism, self pity, fantasizing, over work, excuses, A single comment from someone will cause self doubt as to your progress

You will procrastinate on doing more personal development work.

You will hate yourself or blame someone. Your negative ego has you by the short hairs!

You forget the negative ego visualization - or you do half of it and don’t ask your higher self its opinion of your situation!

You forget all your resources – your positive personality characteristics, your techniques to lift out of this situation, your spirit friends and your human helpers. You do not check your log to see how far you have come.

You become ashamed. You crawl into a hole.

A year later...?????

So how to get out of the hole?

Recognise the signs that you have got into a hole - fast!

Remake your choices – which in the case of loss of motivation to move forward is always: Get out of the hole! Stop blaming or focusing outside circumstances.

Forgive yourself for getting into the hole. After all you are a learning human, and everyone, but everyone, falls into holes on this journey!

Go to the visualization on resistance called Releasing Protective Tension. Read it over several times or practice it.

Release the negative ego.

Use your visualization booklets intuitively to discover which visualization is best for the exact problem you are facing.

Get help from someone who knows if none of this works!