Last night in the Mindshifters group we listened to another half-hour of the four hour audio recording of Dr. Michael Ryce’s lecture titled, “Why Is This Happening To Me Again?”. The thing that struck me during this session was the realization that this work gives me a whole new way to understand, “Keep your thoughts on God!”. As a child being raised in a Roman Catholic home and attending Roman Catholic schools, I was frequently told to keep my thoughts pure and think about God. As I listened to the lecture last night, I had the realization that when I think of God as a person, a father, a powerful being, etc., I have a difficult time staying focused on God while going about my daily activities. However, when I think of God as Love, and as the energy of Love, and realize that I was designed as an energy system to contain that energy, it is much easier to keep my thoughts focused on God.
I can’t explain exactly why this hit me so strongly, but it is often the case as I read, or listen to those things which contain powerful material, that when I am exposed to the material time after time, it takes on new levels of meaning, and I gain new insights time and again. This time it just struck me that I have been working with this material to the extent that I am beginning to think about my energy and my emotions much more often during any given day. While I am focused on my emotions, I am striving to hold the energy of Love and return to it whenever I find myself feeling anything less than Love. This is the basis of the work that Dr. Michael Ryce is spreading through his teachings, and it is the goal of all of the tools he provides on his website.
While listening to the audio last night, it struck me that I was indeed thinking more about (God / Love) throughout the day, than ever before in my life, and in ways that reminded me about the old Catholic admonitions to keep my thoughts focused on God. It occurred to me that with what I have been learning through the Dr. Ryce audios and videos, I am able to use anything and everything as a trigger to help me focus on Love. I either focus on the energy of Love and feel the positive effects of that energy, or I recognize that I am feeling something less than Love and start using one of the many tools I have learned to restore myself to the awareness of my source in Love.
During the support group portion of the meeting the members worked on Reality Management worksheets, (www.whyagain.com), and several members realized they were dealing with related issues in their worksheets. One of the powerful common themes was that of fear. As we processed the worksheets at the end of the group, the comment was made about how we get triggered to feel fear and then we avoid dealing with whatever triggered that fear. We discussed how this builds a pattern in our minds which grows stronger every time the pattern is repeated. Each time I avoid something which triggers fear, my mind has told me that the trigger for the fear is not safe, and that if I move toward it I will not survive it. Then each time I avoid the trigger for my fear, and I survive, my mind says, “See, you survived! That means you needed to avoid that fearful trigger, (person, place or thing), in order to survive! You see, I told you, you would not have survived if you moved toward that terrible thing, or person!” The fact that I survived is used by my mind to reinforce the conclusion that I needed to avoid the fearful trigger.
As we have learned in this work, anytime I am feeling anything less than Love, I am getting distorted, inaccurate data about what is really happening around me. My mind will use whatever data it gets to show me what I have told it to show me. In the example above, when I am triggered to feel fear, the data my mind receives is distorted and it tells me that the trigger is dangerous. Then my mind goes to work producing evidence that proves to me that the trigger is dangerous. My mind gathers and creates evidence to feed the conclusion that my trigger is dangerous, and that I will only survive if I avoid it.
This reminds me of a quote by Benjamin Franklin, “I have experienced many horrible difficulties in my life; most of which have never happened.” This quote speaks to me of how I torture myself with fear and procrastination as I dread confronting someone or something, and how the actual confrontation is never as bad as I feared it would be. This is also related to a quote I mentioned in an earlier post, from The Mirror Theory, “Fear is created by refusing to face the truth about our lives. But as soon as we do, fear disappears. It only lives in a soul that refuses to make a decision. To heal is to walk right into whatever we think is paralyzing us.”
I am grateful to all the people who attend these groups and share their energy, stories, and Love.
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.