Your Flashlight to Pierce the Darkness

How would you like to be rich? What would you do, if you received everything you wished for?  How would you feel if all your dreams came true?

Well, I would like to make clear an idea of how we think and what we do with our thoughts. Throughout all our lives we've had millions of thoughts. Those thoughts have, one way or another, ran our lives. When we were young, we were subjected to ideas and ways of thinking that was either helping us or hurting us. Then we kept  those ideas and made them our own and let them control our lives. How would you feel if you were sitting in your house watching TV or something and someone just  barged right in your front door? Then proceeded to tell you what to do and how to live.  Well, for one thing you would kick that person out. He has no right to just come in your house without your permission!

Think again, because that is exactly what we are doing with someone else's idea or controlling thoughts when we allow that thought to enter our way of thinking. Subconsciously, we begin to integrate their thoughts with our own and then begin to believe that it is our thought. Then when things start to go wrong in our lives, we wonder what went wrong, i.e. why didn't I get that job? or why doesn't that person love me? It's because we allowed negative thoughts in our Mind Bank.                                                            

You see, all of us have a subconscious memory bank. I will call it a Mind Bank for my example. This Mind Bank is our storage area of our thoughts and feelings. We make deposits in this bank every day. It is good to make deposits because we can save up a storage for later use. The important lesson here is, what we deposit IN is exactly what we withdraw OUT later. Think of your thoughts as coins that you would deposit in your Mind Bank. There are a lot of thought coins that we deposit and a lot that we withdraw. Now, imagine that your thought coins that are positive and build you up are made of pure Gold. The thought coins that are NOT good for you and are negative are made out of plastic. How much Gold coins do you have in your Mind Bank as opposed to plastic coins?

An example of good thoughts are things that help build up your self esteem and confidence in yourself, plus helps see yourself as kind, loving and generous. Subconsciously, we have a tendency to criticize ourselves so it would take a conscious effort to make deposits of positive thoughts in our Mind Bank. Affirmations are good for this as well as prayers. A good affirmation is one that reenforces our love for ourselves.

For example, simple words like:

 "Let the peace, love and joy that I AM manifest in my life here and now."

or

 "I am a radiating center of total joy and peace, I am the love and laughter that will always be. I am the way, the truth, the light. I am an angel in preparation for flight. In the name and through the power of the presence I AM. I now decree divine order in my life and affairs."

This affirmation is good because you are making a declaration of divine right. And you are allowing a higher vibration of love into your life to take charge.
There is a transforming effect that it will give you, which will definitely deposit Gold coins in your Mind Bank to withdraw later.

Now, an example of bad thoughts or plastic coins being deposited in your Mind Bank are:
"I am so fat and ugly", "I am really dump and I hate myself!", "I can't do anything right", "Why doesn't anybody love me?".  Also, just by starting a sentence with "I can't......" is enough to limit you and generate a plastic coin. I bet you could come up with a lot more negative sayings about yourself, I know I can because I have said them about myself too. It's just now, I am aware of those negative thoughts and how they are affecting me. Believe me, you are not the only person that has been putting yourself down. But, you can be one of many that is changing your way of thinking towards the positive about  yourself and making positive deposits.
                                                                                                      
Now, as you know, making negative deposits in your Mind Bank will only allow you to withdraw negative feeling about yourself.  What happens when someone else makes a negative remark about you? There are many ways you can react. 

♦ One is you allow that negative thought in and generate a plastic coin in our Mind Bank.

♦ Two is you can resist the words being said about you and reject them.

♦ Three is you can take in the words, but transform them to a positive by applying the words        as a constructive criticism. 

True, it does depend on the actual words and if they had any core truth in them about you. But, that is what your positive Gold coins are for, to help your self- esteem cope with any negative outside influence. If you don't stick up for yourself, nobody else will.
So you have to be pro-active and generate your own positive Mind Bank that will counter act any future negative comments.  

How are our emotions affected by our thoughts?

When it comes to the Mind, words and language have to be translated to pictures because the mind works in pictures. Our thoughts are constantly formalizing what we hear and see in our heads. The power to envision what you want is more effective than just saying it. Our emotions are  driven by the pictures we see in our heads. Emotion stands for Energy Motion.  Our feelings are like water flowing down a river. The rocks and boulders in the river are like thoughts redirecting our emotions. The negative rocks or thoughts are big and square causing more hinderance in the flow. The positive rocks are round and allow the water to move easily.

The bigger the rock or thought, the more it redirects or hinders the flow of water or emotions.  Our negative thoughts are like putting up a dam in the river, which will build up the water behind the dam and create pressure. At the same time it will starve the river after the dam from the needed water flow or emotions. That is why we burst out in anger or frustration sometimes because we have broken a dam of negative thoughts and the water or emotions is shooting forward down the river. The river will not be denied its flow.

Positive thoughts on the other hand go with the flow of the water and do not hinder it at all.  Having a Mind Bank full of positive thoughts is like placing an electric generator in the river of emotions. Every positive feeling you have about yourself and others, generates a surge of electricity in your body, effectively energizing the river of emotions and you.  When you feel good, you tend to pass it forward. When you get positive feedback, that really energizes you and in turn deposits lots of Gold coins in your Mind Bank to pass forward again.

So our feelings can be directed by what we envision in our minds. Words alone don't do it as affectively. It's like when we pray the same prayer at night before we go to sleep, but we don't put any feelings or pictures behind our words. They are empty words. Yet, when we criticize ourselves unconsciously, we do it with feeling and intension. That can only hurt us. Why can't we do that with positive thoughts? That's when our positive affirmation comes in. The affirmation needs to be repeated many times at first in order for you to actually believe what you are saying. It's easy to say something positive, but to actually believe it is another thing altogether.   With what we take in, we can choose to except it or reject it. If it is against what we believe then we will reject it. Idea's can be rejected based on what we believe from our previous thoughts in our Mind Bank. Our experiences filter out things that  go against our core beliefs. So our collected ideas and beliefs are stored in our Mind Bank and make up who we are and how we interact in society.  So, it would behoove us to only deposit ideas that will propel us towards the most positive and constructive outcome that we can get.

 Yet, with this reasoning, why is it not happening to most of us? I believe it is mostly because we are unconscious about how we think. We are not directly involved in our own thinking process and we leave much of our thoughts to chance. Also, it is simply because we just don't know how. We don't know how to protect ourselves from those bad thoughts or ideas. Then, it really comes down to attitude and education.

Firstly, a positive attitude in ones life is extremely important. I'm sure you have heard it before, but have you really taken it seriously enough to apply it in your life? I believe that a positive attitude is a thing that is learned and has to be consciously applied everyday.  Having a negative attitude is also a conscious decision, but seems to be easier to feel. It seems easier to think that the cup is half empty than half full. There is a sense of effort to believe that the cup is half full and the feeling is "I don't want to make that effort". Having a negative attitude is like rolling down hill. You don't need to make an effort to be unconscious of your self and your surroundings. Kind of like tuning out of your feelings and being numb with a blank mind. Plus people seem to think that being pessimistic about things is safer. They feel that they are not taking any chances and not putting themselves out on a limb.
"I will just hide inside my little corner and not bother anybody, but I will thrash out at others if they get too close". This feeling mostly comes from fear and a low self-esteem. It is an extreme view of having a Mind Bank full of plastic coins.
                                                                                                                                                                           
 It also generates insecurities from those fears which feeds on itself in a kind of negative cycle spiraling downward to more aggressive behavior and language.  We see it all the time in our own environment  with people constantly swearing or with negative attitudes in our day to day activities. Their Mind Bank it would seem is saturated in fear and negative thoughts.  There is also an undetected wave of negative emotion that passes along from one person to another which is also passed forward. This negative vibration is contagious just like it is in a positive feeling, except the negative feelings can be much more destructive.  I have felt those negative emotional waves before and I unconsciously took on that feeling and passed it forward to another unsuspecting person.

 It is hard to suppress anger and rage when it is thrust upon you, specially if it is from someone who is close to you because it hurts so much. You must put up your guard and predict what is coming so you can protect yourself from getting the full onslaught of the negative emotion. When it mostly happens from the ones we love, it is like walking on egg shells around them. Then your guard is always up, which can get quite unnerving and exhausting.

Having a positive attitude on the other hand, can and will change your life for the better. Just the simple act of smiling can make yours and someone else's day. To even have a positive attitude, you must already have many gold coins in you Mind Bank. In order to have a positive attitude, you need to withdraw from your bank POSITIVE thoughts. You won't be able to withdraw those thoughts if you didn't put them in there in the first place. So having a positive attitude also generates a cycle, except it is a constructive, self empowering cycle of high self-esteem. Your attitude will then be based on a solid foundation of LOVE and HAPPINESS. Of course we aren't always happy, but our positive attitude can generate and transform those negative thoughts and emotions to positive ones which will perpetuate the contagious cycle and pass it forward.

For example, when you come in to work in the morning and your co-worker asks you "How are you doing?", your reply is "FANTASTIC!".
Now, the point here is, you may not be feeling exactly fantastic at the time, but your powerful statement will help generate that feeling in you AND pass that emotion forward to others in the office. Yes, love is contagious and very powerful. We tend to underestimate the power of positive thinking because we don't see the results right away.  Yet, when we see  others with positive attitudes who are complimenting each other, you know that it's the Power of Positive at work. Soon your positive words and big smile will be blooming like beautiful flowers in a big majestic garden!

Secondly, educating yourself.
Your education and attitude go hand-in-hand.  Reading books about the subject, listening to CD's, anything to counter-act all of the negative things we encounter everyday is worth trying.  Anything contributing to your Mind Bank in a positive way will help you reap the rewards for a long time to come. In general, we choose how to feel when we get up in the morning. So you could say that our attitude is directly affected by our choice.  Even though that sounds obvious, this realization should be empowering to you. So knowing that we have the choice on how to feel at least for that morning, don't you think you would want to have the best informed choice possible? That is where education comes in. When we educate ourselves about positive issues,  we are empowering ourselves with a choice.  The choice is simple really, just choose to smile at yourself in the mirror in the morning, regardless how you feel inside. Open the window shade and let the sunshine in. Your positive actions will override your undecided feelings inside.  It must be a conscious decision at first. Turn on the radio for some nice music, laugh out loud. Give yourself or your family a compliment about how they look. All these actions will make you feel better, and will have the affect of passing a good vibration forward. So educating ourselves by reading books, going to seminars and classes will give us a much stronger foundation for a positive attitude. It also helps to hang around other positive people who have your well being in mind and are consciously aware of having a positive attitude and humor. Now a days, there are so many forums on the internet with different people communicating and connecting that it is truly mind boggling. The world has really become a small place in this era because of technology. And the outgoing nature of mankind reaching to each other is truly a fantastic opportunity to improve ourselves and our lives.