Conscious Mindsets, Part Four

March 13th, 2010

If you’re not sure what Conscious Mindsets are about, visit Conscious Mindsets, Part One.

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Intro and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindset #4 — The Adventurer

In the final mindset offered in this four-part series, it’s time for some fun. As adventurers, it doesn’t really matter whether we’re rich or poor. Security is thrown out the door in exchange for passion and excitement. As adventurers, we’re looking for experiences that take us a bit beyond our comfort zone. This might mean going rock climbing when we’re afraid of heights, going for a day-long hike and picnic, or trying something that you’ve always wanted to do even though you know it’s a little risky. This is one of my favorite mindsets, since it contrasts so beautifully with our usual attempts to keep everything as secure as possible. Security tends to lead to a sensation of clenching and fear, which creates more need for security, which creates more clenching and fear . . . you see how it goes. Being an adventurer, however, asks us to ‘live in the moment’ in the sense that we value unique experiences over security.

Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts

Today I’m not going to live in fear. If something feels uncomfortable, I’m going to plunge right in. Today, life is about Experience, and if I ever feel even a bit of fear or trepidation, I’m going to stop, observe my fear, and see if I can’t challenge it.

This doesn’t mean we should do stupid things, but it does ask us to observe how often fear can limit our experience, even when it comes to such ‘mundane’ things as talking to a certain person, trying a new food, or learning a new skill.

Developing This Mindset

This mindset breaks us free of many of our ingrained patterns. The more you explore it, the more you’ll begin to lead an extraordinary life, and the more you’ll get in touch with the areas of your life where fear holds you back. The drive for security is seen for what it is — a fear-based response that holds us back from our passions and our dreams — and we find ourselves free to explore areas of life that before seemed too ‘outrageous’.

The four mindsets presented in this series are simply tools to play with — tools that break us out of our usual modes of thinking and being and show us, first hand, the powerful role that our attitudes play in how our days unfold. Whenever we feel like life is boring or ordinary, it’s not because life is boring or ordinary. It’s because we’ve become habituated to certain modes of behavior. We have the power, at any moment, to break free of those modes and to experience life in all its extraordinary splendor.

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Conscious Mindsets, Part Three

March 8th, 2010

If you’re not sure what Conscious Mindsets are about, visit Conscious Mindsets, Part One.

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Intro and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindsets Part Four, The Adventurer

Conscious Mindset #3 — The Magician’s Apprentice

Did you know that you can influence whether people are happy or unhappy? Try an experiment — take one day and walk around all day with a pleasant smile on your face. Be friendly to people, ask them about themselves, and go a little out of your way to be nice. Then notice whether you thought that most of the people around you were in good moods or bad moods. The next day, put on a perma-scowl, and just sort of trudge through the day. At the end of the day, note how the people around you acted.

This becomes more ‘magical’ when we become more subtle. If we’re just thinking warm, happy thoughts throughout the day, the people around us will tend to be in good moods; however,  if we’re in a foul mood, even if we try to put on a smile, most of the people around us will tend to be rather grumpy.

This isn’t really magic. It’s simply a matter of how we hold ourselves, our body language, and perhaps even the pheromones we produce when we’re in one mood or another. The important lesson is that our attitude makes a real and tangible difference in our ‘external’ environment.

This can be seen whenever someone who practices modern-day magic does a love spell. Invariably, the spell works, and people report that after the spell, they are approached more, asked on dates, and simply get more attention. Again, this might not be ‘magic’ so much as a subtly increased confidence delivered by the recipient thinking that they have magic on their side.

If you explore this, you can truly begin to work ‘magic’ in your life. Your attitude — as manifested in your body carriage, the amount of eye contact you make, your level of confidence, and the way that you approach each situation in life — is the ’secret’ behind working miracles in your life. Forget, for a moment, everything you know or think you know about the Law of Attraction and Intention-Manifestation, and do your own experimentation with the power of a smile or a positive thought.

In the Magician’s Apprentice mindset, you are an apprentice magician, and the world and people around you are your training-ground. Don’t expect any certain results at first — just experiment. Some methods of using this subtle magic work better for some than for others. I won’t get into any detailed instructions or advice at this time, but will simply suggest that you play with things yourself.

Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts

I am an apprentice magician, and today my teacher has asked me to experiment with my budding powers. Results don’t matter — the only thing that matters is that I pay attention to my attitudes and thoughts, as well as any methods of manifestation that I attempt to use, and note what seems to work and what doesn’t. At the end of the day, I hope to have a better understanding of what methods of manifestation seem to have efficacy for me.

If you’ve ever experimented with Intention-Manifestation before, you likely ran into some pitfalls (if you didn’t, you’d probably be perfectly content right now and wouldn’t be reading this ;) ) Many of those pitfalls evolve out of our own sense of fear and expectation. Using the Magician’s Apprentice mindset as outlined above removes us from fear and expectation — all that is important is experimentation, and when we’re experimenting, ‘failures’ are really successes, because they help us to understand what works and what doesn’t. Each of us has enormous potential to shape the world around us on scales that might seem unbelievable to us right now. This can be the beginning of your own experimentation and learning process as you discover your own ‘magic’.

Developing This Mindset

Keep a journal and note which techniques work for you and which don’t. There are many authors offering different techniques for manifestation, but your own inner wisdom can uncover your innate ability to shift and alter the world around you.

Even if you aren’t able to immediately create any ‘magic’ in your life, you’ll begin to get more in touch with the state of mind that you are currently in at any given moment, which is one of the first steps in the journey toward Awakening.

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Conscious Mindsets, Part Two

March 7th, 2010

If you’re not sure what Conscious Mindsets are about, visit Conscious Mindsets, Part One.

Also Read:

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Introduction and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindsets Part Four, The Adventurer

Conscious Mindset #2 — The Tourist

When we visit a new place, our minds are open to all the new sights and sounds and experiences around us. If we visit Mexico, for instance, we might be delighted by palm trees, coconuts on the shore, strange bugs, the food, and the people. We’ll visit shops, observe architecture, or go to educational programs.

Of course, when we live somewhere for a time, we start to be less amazed by our surroundings. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, because as we stop looking around us, we begin to create ruts, whereby we travel the same routes all the time and seldom deviate from our habits. Soon our environment can seem boring, because we’re always seeing the same places, the same people, and the same things.

To create the Tourist mindset, consider that everything is always changing. We might think that the drive into town looks the same as it did yesterday, but in actuality it’s quite different. Begin to imagine that you are a tourist in your own town or in the natural areas you frequent. Even, if you like, in your own home! Try some of the restaurants you’ve never bothered to go into, visit some shops you’ve always ignored, talk to some of the ‘locals’. Look on bulletin boards to find out what community activities are happening, and see if you can observe your surroundings as if you’re beholding them for the first time. When we do this, we are often surprised at the wondrous things all around us — things we ignored because we had adopted habitual patterns of observation.

Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts

I’ve just arrived here in this foreign country, and I’ve never seen any of this before. I’m excited to experience and observe all the new things, people, and places that this country has to offer.

Thinking like this helps us experience the world from a fresh perspective, and helps to rescue us from our tendency to develop a sort of tunnel-vision that largely prevents us from engaging with our surroundings.

It helps even more to do this with a friend, child, or partner, who can point out things that you miss. At the end of the day, share your experiences, or if you like, keep a journal and take some photos to record all the things you experience. Take a moment to notice how much richer your experience is when you approach everything from a fresh perspective.

Developing This Mindset

With a little practice, we can permanently incorporate a sort of Tourist mindset. By observing the amazing changes that take place around us all the time — in our environment, in other people, and even in ourselves — we can begin to understand change, and become amazed at everyday phenomena. As this grows in us, we start to find wonder in raindrops, in clouds, in the way our fingers can move over a keyboard and communicate thoughts and feelings to people on the other side of the planet. Living life in amazement opens our hearts to every moment, and gives us a true passion for living.

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