To print this page, select "Print" The Mystic's Life Lesson #7 What Will Prevail? You may find you have to struggle in order to be more conscious. Despite wonderful benefits close at hand, you will nevertheless find yourself fighting what seems at times a tedious, uphill battle. Why? Old tendencies are very powerful. Your habits will almost always win. It's not a question of sincerity, either. Of course you'd like to be a more loving, creative person. Who wouldn't? Certainly it would be wonderful to contact your higher consciousness with its thrilling insight and inner power. No question it's a worthwhile endeavor. No question it's worth persistence and quantities of attention. Nevertheless, your old tendencies, the way you habitually think and feel your most regular attitudes about life from yesterday and yesteryear will not easily yield to a happier you. Very often we sincerely make commitments to ourselves. We may even tell others about the new person we are striving to be. Yet a few weeks down the road we are all too often the same. Endeavoring to shape a new life, in one way or another, can be gallingly frustrating. We usually fail. The old way of doing things, the old habit patterns, are so familiar and apparently powerful. Too frequently we resign and give in to the idea that while other people may succeed in their transformation projects, we are somehow less qualified as human beings. Others must have tremendous will power, whereas ours must indeed be very puny. Or, then again, were we truly sincere? Maybe we didn't mean it. Obviously we must not have valued our commitment to our new dreams and goals because we gave up so easily. We failed with such total surrender. It only took a few weeks and here we are, unsuccessful once again. We feel either weak-willed or are convinced that our sincerity is most ingenuine. Next time, when a good idea comes our way we decide not to be fooled into believing we're sincere. That's that. So it goes. We joyously jump into failure. Good Intentions Arent Enough But the fact is you're not alone. You're normal. Most everyone, despite helpful inspiration and a deep sincerity, will fail or give up ("giving up" is a nicer word for failure) before accomplishing vitally important goals. Many people will generally fail. Then, with failure, the guilt feelings come along. Unhappy with yourself, you often lash out at others, or you refuse to have good will, not only for other people but for yourself as well. The guilt feelings last a long time and regularly tell you you're not a very good person you're not worthy or capable of a better life. Certainly, you feel you're not worthy of higher consciousness. You develop a secret. Despite the right clothes or the right words, you know down deep you're inferior to other people. You know your failures. You know your limitations. Other people don't know. They can't see how badly you've fallen short of your dearest hopes. They don't know, or do they? "Is my inadequacy visible?" you wonder. When you know you're an inferior person, what's the point of trying? So, when you've failed several times you do the obvious: find fitting compromises, find a niche for your inadequate self and muddle along as best you can. Of course it's helpful to be quite critical of other people so you can be mindful of their inferiorities as well as your own aching ego. Compromise is the rule of the day and, after all, isn't that what everybody does? Isn't everyone, in fact, something of a joke? A blunderer? Yes, why does anyone ever try to be more than he or she was yesterday? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is widely stated. Good intentions are pleasant in their own way but how do you, how can you, take good intentions and make them into realities? How can you in truth become more conscious and accomplish, in fact, not in fantasy, what you so powerfully yearn for? Overcoming Old Habits It is so important to understand something of the process of success. In whatever area you seek success, you must understand that your tendencies, your habits, will prevail. Most often, old tendencies and habits frustrate and generally smother the new life you are striving to create. Your old tendencies took years of development. Each of us is deeply entrenched in old ways. How can we expect a new rivulet created in three minutes or three days of aspiration to possibly stand against the mighty, deep rivers we have built over ten, fifteen, twenty-five years? Yet the fact that you are here indicates you have already begun breaking free of old, destructive tendencies. You are searching for a new vision. You are raising your consciousness to new possibilities. You are thinking of higher and alternate ways of doing things. You are contemplating the possibility that higher consciousness does exist and is available to you. You even suspect that higher consciousness is this very minute locked within you, ready to be unleashed. Further, you appreciate that some higher consciousness is already at work throughout your life in order for you to be able to breathe, walk, talk, think, feel. This attitude allows your attention and emotions to overflow the banks of old riverbeds of habits to seek new directions. Old tendencies will never repeat, never be able to stop you if you thoroughly understand the following process. The main thing that must be understood at every step along the way to a more conscious and even superconscious life is this: The seeker of higher consciousness and fulfillment must create new tendencies! Your greater success in life is based on your willingness to not only think about new possibilities but to redirect the flow of your thoughts and feelings, the flow of your life force, into new tendencies and habits of living. New tendencies must be formed, habits and attitudes which will be truly constructive and which at no point will block or inhibit your heartfelt purposes. Almost all failure, especially regarding the achievement of higher consciousness, is caused by our not forming new tendencies. Keep At It Somehow people think that merely having a new idea or an enthusiastic, heart-pumping time at some lecture will bring about the new fulfillment or extraordinary capacities. If this were the case, our planet would be instantly out of trouble. The world today is filled with people who get excited about a new idea or way of life almost every month. As soon as they begin to lose their inspiration, and old habits start to sweep them away from the goal once glimpsed so brightly, they move onto something else and proceed through life, jag after jag. Later they look back at their lives and notice they haven't accomplished much of anything. They notice friends they met along the way, friends who seem to have gained the fruits of success friends who were more constant in their focus on goals. The jaggers find they themselves have traveled far but arrived nowhere. To accomplish your fulfillment and know your higher consciousness, vigorous, constant, new tendencies have to be formed. These tendencies will become so strong that no old habits will be able to overcome them. Also, when these new tendencies are consciously and lovingly created, shocks and deceptions of the outer world will not be able to knock you off course or out of stride. It's important also to value those constructive tendencies you have already developed. Not all old tendencies are bad. Take time to evaluate which habits of thought, feeling, and action have always been constructive and valuable in your life. Appreciate them anew, give them a chance to grow and expand, becoming more serviceful aids in your life's new directions. The habits of being kind, or of being able to concentrate easily and well, for example, are extremely helpful tendencies which all too many seekers of higher consciousness have to reestablish or perhaps build from scratch. Please keep in mind as you progress that many wonderful ideas will come your way. Many partial skills will be revealed to you, too. But none of these significant gifts along your path will be truly yours until you have fully established new tendencies. New habits of thought, feeling, and self-esteem must become an integrated part of you. When you find it particularly easy and natural to behave in the new way that you have chosen, you will succeed. You will succeed for you have formed the tendencies that will get you there. Apply Thoughts and Feelings To repeat, intellectual understanding of higher consciousness in no way assures that you will ever experience higher consciousness. Myriad intellectuals lie in heaps along the roadside. They have the ideas but have not used those ideas to create new tendencies. Even if your heart palpitates in sympathy with some great mission, your thoughts and emotions in no way assure that you will be able to accomplish that mission or even stay true to it for two days. Another thing must be understood about these all-important tendencies. A true tendency is a product of your whole being. Since every part of your life must work in harmony with the other parts, a tendency cannot be created without the cooperation of your thoughts and your feelings. While more is actually required, it is essential that you first understand that mind and emotions must come to an agreement in the endeavor to create a new tendency. If the thought nature is saying, "How silly. How superstitious!" or "How worthless!" while the emotional nature is striving to move toward a clearly important fulfillment, no new tendency will be formed and there will be inner conflict. Indeed, a personal civil war can only result. Yet there will be times when the mind wants to enter activities or accomplish goals which are in direct conflict with the desires of the heart. These cross-purposes lead to deep problems even mental illness if the civil war is particularly severe. Sometimes, your mind may wish to engross itself in a project perhaps a design or invention. However, if your emotions have another agenda, if they "prefer" to indulge in grief, jealousy, or some form of numbness, no successful tendency will be formed. The civil war will resume on a new front and the mind will not generally have enough thrust, enough power, to develop the new project. And, your health may be affected as well. Weakness, nerve, or digestive problems, for example, may occur. So, for a new tendency and a victory over the past, you must consider your new goal mentally and emotionally. You have to be sure that the two can work together on each important goal. When your mind is convinced that "The New Tendency Project" is worthwhile, it will not sabotage the project but will pitch in and help, bringing to the forefront its resources of ideas and concepts. Your mind will help create new images which will be extremely beneficial indeed, essential for the new tendency and its fulfillment. Your emotions will contribute inspiration, excitement, comfort, encouragement, and a dogged endurance. Whenever you seek to be more successful in any way, stop and have a huddle within yourself. Dialogue. Introspect. Marshal your reason. Examine your feelings, clarify them. Then mentally and emotionally conceive the ideal thoughts and feelings for your new endeavor. Whenever the two powerful forces of thoughts and feelings work together as a unity, you will form an extremely strong, new tendency. When they work together they will not be denied. You will succeed through the help of your cooperative allies. Your Life Force Thoughts and feelings aren't the whole story, however. As your thoughts and feelings combine, they must also have the cooperation and assistance of your life force and your physical body. By life force we mean the energy within you that enables your heart to beat, your breath to move in and out, peristalsis to occur in your abdomen, the energy that makes your blood circulate. No, we're not implying that this energy has a mind of its own, but without question it has a momentum of its own. After all, life force is sustained by a most brilliant higher consciousness. Your life force regularly carries out exploits of life support which baffle the understanding of your regular mind, doesn't it? When you are changing your life, especially when you are creating a new tendency, you want your life force to move in this new direction, too. You want it to move cooperatively along the lines that your mind and emotions have agreed upon. It's important to spend quiet time with your mind and emotions interplaying with the new tendency while encouraging your life force, your physical energy, to move in this new way also. Your life force readily responds to the direction of your thoughts and feelings. Metaphysicians and mystics have often demonstrated that what you think and feel can affect your vitality level or improve the functioning of your breathing or your heartbeat. While the relationship of thoughts and feelings with vital energy is a vague field of science at this point, or perhaps is considered scarcely scientific at all, you can, through conceiving mentally/emotionally of the new goal, enable your life force to become more readily supportive of the new tendency. Simply, make slow, long exhalations as you mentally picture your goal and emotionally direct your feelings toward the goal as well. While direction of life force may seem a difficult area to understand, you will know that your life force is cooperating in the formation of a new tendency when you experience extra energy in fact, vitality to spare as you work toward the new reality that you have determined to bring about. As you can see, it's very important to be sure you wish to create the new tendency before you marshal your thought processes, your emotional nature, and even your life force toward the new tendency and goal! Your Physical Body Lastly, the physical body itself has to cooperate. If it's prone to laziness or inactivity, or if by habit it has behaved in a most contrary fashion to the assistance you now wish, then your physical habits have to be turned around too. If your physical body doesn't cooperate, you will suffer the frustrations of civil war once again. It's extremely helpful to train your body to serve you in each new tendency you choose. When you have mentally and emotionally focused on formation of a new tendency, conceive also the ideal behavior you expect of your body. Then, patiently develop the physical skills and habits. Too often the body's role in success is not considered. Suppose you want to accomplish something which greatly involves your mental nature. If your body won't sit still or is continually resisting the intensity of mental work, it can easily keep you from success. On the other hand, if you have chosen to accomplish something through vigorous activity, your body can't have a habit of being lethargic. In this case your body may have to be toned up and strengthened through exercise in order not to let you down. Frankly, there is one more factor in forming a new tendency but you'll have to work on it in subsequent lessons. You have to be nearly superconscious in order to deal with this one remaining potential ally (or potential foe). It is the ego, or sense of self. If your ego is determined to grow and change and sacrifice itself to a new way of living, it will be a great ally. However, many people have an ego sense which is very self-destructive and balky. Their sense of self ignores enriching possibilities while sabotaging worthwhile projects presented to it by the mental and emotional nature. So, at present, your ego can most significantly help you if you maintain an attitude of willingness to grow a readiness to become a finer person. With this initial cooperation of your sense of self, you will enable a tremendous force to help establish each new tendency. Believe it or not, large numbers of people have an ego which seeks failure and suffering rather than prosperity and well being. True Tendencies Win! Summing up, life-enriching new tendencies as they are forged consciously and with your whole being can be established fairly quickly. True tendencies win! They have momentum. They carry you through. Well-formed tendencies enable you to succeed when the going gets tough. They enable you to prevail despite outward circumstances. In many ways, your greatest treasures are your constructive tendencies. They are more powerful than thoughts, feelings, and negative habits of doing things. If you will take the time and patiently combine all your energies in the formation of tendencies that you would really like to have, you will be one of those few people who ultimately succeeds whenever you set out toward a new and important goal. You will be among the less than ten percent who understand the process of success. In forming powerful, constructive tendencies, you will also be accomplishing the consolidation you need in order to know your higher consciousness.
A Life-Enriching Affirmation You may wish to say this affirmation with deep, clear thought each morning. It will help you develop new tendencies.
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