Shards of Consciousness

The summer has gentled in the last week in this part of the world. It's been cool enough to sleep comfortably at night. What rain we have had hasn't come in torrential downpours. Days have brought gentle breezes with the slight smells of the coming autumn. As I write this it is, as Wallace said in Braveheart, a beautiful day in Scotland as the rains fall straight down with no winds driving them.

Now I could, if I wished, believe the rain is a horrible event. There is a river regatta here this weekend, and most people would prefer a dry, sunny day. But it isn't. It is wet, and comfortably warm. The regatta will go on. Should we let our perception of the rain ruin our pleasure in it?

I've previously defined belief as an idea with an ego attachment. In this case beliefs have an emotional tone, and actually drive our emotions. This is fine if you are happy with your life. Your beliefs are working for you, for the moment at least.

But how many of us are totally happy with every aspect of our lives? In Two Steps to Changing Your Life, Lyman Reed talks about this aspect of beliefs, and gives a technique, not so much for changing beliefs that increase our unhappiness, but to starve them out by replacing them with a positive belief. In this technique, the positive belief doesn't have to be directly related to the negative belief.

In Developing Positive Beliefs John Wesley talks about his realization that the beliefs we hold are a matter of choice, and how, while holding positive beliefs may not always guarantee your success, without them you do guarantee your failure. This isn't applicable to just success. It holds true in all areas of our lives.

We can see this in William Tully's Understanding Changes Beliefs, where he quotes Maxwell Maltz -

Human beings always act, feel, and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment.

We will never be free by avoiding that which we do not want. Effective personal growth comes from pursuing that which we do want.

[tags]Lyman Reed, John Wesley, William Tully, beliefs[/tags]