Everyone is talking about the world the way it is now, in quarantine due to Covid-19. There is very little agreement among the powers that be. Every reporter has a slightly different take on it and every doctor has an opinion on how to or not to treat it. Currently there are many unknowns in the world we live in. There was a discussion the other night in a group I was participating in online about what the world will be like after the Covid-19 crisis is over. There was a lot of back and forth going on, some were hoping the world would get a clue and change and others believed it would just automatically change due to the crisis and others believed it may not change without change occurring within. But right now, the world is fixated on this crisis so much so that we are forgetting we have a choice on how to perceive what is going on and little recognition in that we all have input into how it will be after the crisis is over. It may not change currently what is going on in the world, but it will give us more peace if we change our minds about how we react to what is going on. It is not healthy to get too wrapped up in the reporting of the virus or the polarizing politics that they want us all to be a part of. Remember that what we are seeing is what they want to present to the public the news can be presented in many different ways. We are responsible for how we filter the messages and integrate them into our lives.

REMEMBER TO BE IN THE MOMENT

I am always teaching the importance of being in the moment of our experience and in the now, you may be just watching with no symptoms of Covid-19. So, in the moment, relax into this and accept your experience without worry/anxiety or telling ourselves a story about what may happen to you or someone else. Watch without interpretation, resentment or anger. In this moment nothing is happening you are complete.

HOW DO WE DO THIS

Being present now is something that is always available to us no matter what is going on outside of us. My mentor would remind me that I have a choice in how I see the world it may not change and probably will not change the external circumstances, but it will change my own mind and bring me peace. He would say, if you learn to do this you can find peace in any situation even in a nuclear bombing. I hear his words now more than ever. I remind myself not to be swayed by the news and to be mindful of how I choose to react to that news. For the most part I stay away from the news instead I look at the changes in the numbers and the graphs. Looking at the pandemic in this way leaves out all of the drama and sensationalism that the press exposes us to. Our world may be in a challenging state right now, but we do not have to join them there. Go outside get some sunshine, listen to the birds singing and appreciate what you have. Gratitude is very important to our well-being. I have a sign in my office, “gratitude turns what we have into enough.”

The next step is to be mindful of how we label what is going on. The circumstances may be and are difficult right now, but we can change our viewpoint by changing how we judge it. The world is presenting us all with an opportunity for a spiritual awakening. These opportunities are always present for us in our daily life this current one is undeniably present to the entire world. This does not mean that we should not take action in the world because there will always be concrete external circumstances that need to be changed. But if we don’t work with our own minds and our own perceptions, the outside world will not change either. I am reminded of another quote from A Course in Miracles, “the world is an outside picture of an inward condition.” If we do not change our internal conditions, the way we perceive and react to the outside world the suffering in the world will continue. The pandemic, the political and economic struggles that we are all experiencing will remain the same. The teaching moment that is going on in the world will be missed. Why? Because we are not changing our own habitual mind traps and if those don’t change, we will not be reducing our suffering. We all have an opportunity to remain asleep or awaken from this dream or nightmare whichever way you choose to label it. If it is an opportunity to wake up why not call it a dream.

ALL MINDS ARE CONNECTED

An Instagram message just popped up on my phone while I was writing this post, so I decided to take a look because it was from A Course in Miracles and I do believe in signs. Here is what it stated, “You must look upon your illusions and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation.” This is proof to me that all minds are connected and that is the point that I am trying to make. If we want to change the world, we have to change our mind about how we see the world. When we keep our own hidden mind traps in the unconscious, the beliefs belong to us and they become self-sustaining. This is also what is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, our thoughts become our demons and they do not serve us or others they keep us trapped. We must all be willing to look beneath our thoughts our pain and discover the love that is there but has been covered by our fear and anger. This is the foundation of what we call the ego. The ego does not want us to see the truth about who we are. The ego lives through our suffering and projects that suffering into the world. The ego is very threatened by love the ego believes that if love enters it will no longer exist. If we do not look at our own minds and we continue to conceal our negative thought patterns those thoughts create energy and they will be projected into the world we live in. If we want to see a change in the world, we need to change our own minds first. Here is a quote we have all heard by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see.”

The world we live in has been explored by scientists for millenniums, they are looking at what creates the world we live?  They now know that we are energy and energy travels it is not limited to time and space.  We are all energy sources and we all contribute to what we see in the world through our thought patterns. This is what that message above means, “be the change you want to see.” We can change the world by changing our own minds.

I have been studying this spiritually since the early 90’s, I was very fortunate to have an amazing mentor in my life, Dr. Kenneth Wapnick. He is no longer living among us, but I often wonder what he might say. Then I remind myself about some of the things he would say for instance whenever I asked about an upcoming workshop and whether I should attend he would say, “Linda they all say the same thing and you have heard it all before all you have to do is remember the last one.” Whenever he would say this, I would chuckle because of course he was right. Those researchers studying the metaphysical are aware that our thoughts create our own reality and that there are powerful aspects of the world we live in that cannot be explained. Furthermore, our thoughts create and design our own life. This is a difficult concept to accept and an even more difficult one to explain to others and ask them to accept it.

I have had the opportunity to work with one of the greatest spiritual thinkers of our time he taught me so much in the twenty years I knew him about what is and what is not. He opened my eyes up to the many different mysteries of life. I always say that he grew me up in unimaginable ways and beyond my wildest dreams coming from a dysfunctional family. Most of us think that we are propelling our own lives and coming up with novel ideas but in reality, we are only utilizing the same old tapes/stories. Ken would always tell me if you don’t like the story put in another tape. We run these tapes unconsciously over and over without awareness that we are recycling the same stories over and over again. Most of us are unaware that we are running old stories heaped with emotions, fears and core beliefs that are no longer serving us in the here and now. We have accumulated these unconsciously throughout our lives. When life gets difficult, we go back to the habitual story that we are ever so familiar with and keep weaving it into the here and now situation where it no longer serves us. We are slow on the uptake to realize what neuroscientists currently know, that 95 percent of our thoughts are generated in the sub-conscious mind. Furthermore, we only use 5 percent of our cognitive activities this is why change is so difficult. We were hardwired in the first 7 years of our lives and we do not know how to rewire or download an upgraded program. Why you might ask, because it is so habitually ingrained in who we are. When the body experiences something painful it goes back to the familiar the habitual autopilot response. We have been running the response for so long that we don’t know how to change it and even when we are working on changing this response it is often very difficult and requires a lot of conscious awareness on our part. We also have a part of self that has not been brought up, yet this part lurks in our unconscious mind and it is called the ego. The ego hates change and loves keeping us in the dark because it feels threatened and it thinks it is keeping us safe from harm by keeping us in what is familiar. The ego loves routines and habitual ways of doing things, we wake up get a cup of coffee, workout and go to work, come home eat dinner go to sleep and do it all again. Like Groundhog Day we experience the same routines over and over again and we feel safe and secure. But while we are feeling safe, we are sacrificing our well being and happiness. Happiness just doesn’t happen this is something we actually have to work for. As mentioned in one of my other writings changing our habitual patterns meets with a lot of resistance from our minds. It is difficult to embrace new ways of being when our unconscious minds create thoughts, which makes up the same old stories that we have been playing over and over again and always hoping for a different result. Those unconscious beliefs are ingrained and very strong because we have mistakenly made them our truths without questioning their validity. This requires us to ask questions and to look at what we are doing, learning how to separate from our thoughts. Kind of like being our own Sherlock Holmes, taking time to investigate the source of the stories and then looking for the evidence that supports this story.  However, what we find when we start truly examining this is that there is no evidence that supports the truth of this story in the here and now. So, my question is if there is no evidence why do you want to believe it and continue to buy into a story that does not work and keeps you trapped?