Meditation and Beliefs
53Too often, we unconsciously lock ourselves into patterns of behavior that have outgrown their benefits or original intention.
However, it’s not only your everyday activities that need attention. Just as clothes eventually wear out, gardens need weeded, and attics cleared, the habitual effects of your thoughts need reviewing too.
Few of us are continually wearing the same fashions that we wore ten years ago, yet ask yourself what thought patterns do you continually use and reuse, over and over, even though circumstances and people have changed?
The thoughts that you think and the words that you speak say a lot about you as a person and influence the way that people treat you. If you are not aware of negativity in your choice of language, your tone of voice, or even the flow of your thoughts, you should not be surprised when your life does not go the way that you hoped.
Firmly held beliefs can be chipped away at and permanently removed by meditation. You no longer need believe that you are undeserving of success, love, or happiness in whatever endeavors you pursue.
Meditation Holds the Answers
During your meditation practice, awareness on the breath slows the thought process down so that you become aware of what you are thinking and can then respond accordingly rather than reactively. For example, by using the breath and a chosen word such as relax, you can direct this energy of the word to tell your body to breathe deeply and slowly.
Replace your old thought patterns with a new phrase. Start with one thought. Choose a specific word or phrase that you can repeat during your meditation. Ensure that it is positive in nature and in the present tense,
eg “I am loved” rather than “I will be loved.”
Once your meditation is complete, you can continue repeating this word during every day activities. Eventually the word moves from your conscious mind to the sub-conscious mind. It is here that your thoughts and actions are influenced and your life changed.
Keep repeating your word until you know that you believe it, then choose another thought pattern that you wan to replace. Only you can do this by being ever present and ever conscious of your thoughts.
In return, you will transform your thoughts and create the life that you desire.
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Z: Procrastination is almost always a result of habits that seek to keep us from changing our personal status quo. Change is frightening, risky, upsetting, even when the change is good. If you asked the average person if they are content with their station, many would say no, but the unconscious motivations to stay the same overrule the conscious desires to change. I quit smoking successfully...five times! Finally, on the 5th effort, I made a decision to break the actual habit of placing cigarette to mouth. The addiction to nicotine took longer to recede, but choosing to stop the habit of sticking the smoke into my mouth was the key. And as you might guess, it was VERY uncomfortable. Now 20 years later, I have neither the addiction to nicotine nor the desire to pick up the cigarette. But I still have other habits that I'm currently working on. Turns out, virtually our entire life is made up of small and not so small habits. They are all interlinked. Breaking one stirs the others. That creates discomfort. We are more inclined to avoid the discomfort than to institute the pleasure! Yikes!
Z
I have just finished teaching my TriYoga class which also includes pranayama and meditation.
Your question is actually a very common one among people new to meditation. In a book that I have co-written, I explore clinical research with fMRI's to study what is happening in the brain during thoughts and during meditation and what happens when new activities are introduced.
Basically, habits, of any kind, follow a specific neural pathway within the brain. It becomes easier to traverse with each repeated action. This is a good thing otherwise we would all have to learn how to dress every morning!
The downside is when a thought or action becomes outdated or is based on fabricated truth's where your present experiences continually add to a past experience by telling yourself, "see I knew ... would happen, or so-and-so would be like that."
You are reinforcing past beliefs which are not in fact true.
New neural pathways can be formed, but just like a country path covered in undergrowth, it is challenging to wak through at first. With repeated use it becomes easier.
Other research showed that neurons switch on and off (for good reason which I won't go into here) but suffice to say ones that are switched off can be switched on through physical therapy etc when dealing with amputees and stroke patients to make cells do jobs they wouldn't normally do.
So to conclude, by knowing that you have this well worn path, decide that you want to explore the new path. See where it leads. You might enjoy it.
So true, the change must come from within.
So true, the change must come from within.
Z says:
7 months ago
Interesting stuff - I really believe that we can change our thinking as well. One question I think about all the time is:
"why is it so easy to reason things through objectively, but so hard to actually get motivated and do the action?"
One thing that comes to mind is many people's propensity to procrastinate; they realize that they don't want to procrastinate (objectively), but can't motivate themselves to change. I have always thought there is a rift between the objective and motivational parts of the mind.
What do you think is the reason?
Z