Deliberate Receiving Read online

  But why in the hell would we ever conclude something like that? I don’t remember making that decision. Do you?

  Keep in mind that not all of your beliefs (good or bad) stem from observations and decisions that you, personally, made. In fact, most of your beliefs (useful and outdated) were handed to you in a big old bundle of software when you were born and during the first seven years of your life. Your parents, your family, your culture, your society, even your geographical location all played a part in which programs you downloaded automatically. So, somewhere down the line, someone came to a conclusion about life based on incomplete data, and decided that this conclusion was ‘true’. Coupled with the belief that there is only one ‘truth’, like-minded people banded together and began to convert others. Now, while you can’t force someone to agree with you (you can only force them to act like it), you can begin to teach the new, impressionable generation that your limited, faulty conclusion is ‘just the way it is’.

  During our first six to seven years of life, we’re like sponges. We just accept everything (or almost everything) as truth, as a given. We learn how the world works from our surroundings, mostly energetically (we just match the vibrations of those around us), but also through our observations. We soak up the beliefs of our elders. We’re like wide-open funnels that all the beliefs in our family and culture just get dumped into. And since most people don’t know that they can deliberately clean up their vibration before they pass it on to their kids, we pass on all the crappy beliefs right along with the useful ones. So, after a few generations, a belief can become completely indoctrinated into a society, even if the society that spawned it didn’t unanimously agree.

  At this point, many people want to get into a discussion about how limiting beliefs were spread, who did the indoctrinating (the church, the education system, or politicians, for example), and what their motives were. And while I’m not discounting the idea that there were (and are) some mean and horrible human beings running around, doing their best to spread limiting beliefs to the masses in order to make them more controllable or so they can feel more powerful or whatever, I’m not going to spend any time giving any energy to that perspective. To me, it’s much more useful to acknowledge that all beliefs are:

  Simply observations.

  Changeable (each of us has the power to change our beliefs and therefore our reality).

  The douchebags of the world can do what they want; I don’t have to choose to bring any of that into my hologram. And neither do you.

  At some point in our human history, someone observed that some people had more than others, and the concept of unfairness was born, simply because they couldn’t figure out why that was. And from a place of powerlessness, a place of wanting something and not knowing how to get it, they concluded that most of the time, we’re not going to get what we want.

  Holding on to this perspective, however, is like saying that we can’t drive cars now because we didn’t know how they worked in the 1500s, or that we can’t use computers because there was a time in our history when they didn’t exist. Just because some dude a few thousand years ago couldn’t figure out how the mechanism of reality works, doesn’t mean we have to continue to operate from that perspective today. We have evolved. We know a lot more now than we knew then. We have access to a lot more data.

  It’s now easier than ever to get what you want. Get on your computer, order something off the Internet, type in your credit card number, sit back and wait for the goodies to show up at your house. You don’t even have to get dressed.

  Around the globe, 18-year-olds are launching billion-dollar companies. People are getting rich and happy doing things they love, travelling the world with their kids and living their dreams. We have more examples than ever that we can, indeed, get what we want. But we do have to be willing to believe it, or at least be open to the possibility.

  What if you did, actually, get everything you’ve ever wanted? Most people won’t even consider that thought, because it’s too painful. They’re convinced that this isn’t even a possibility – they’ve accepted this as truth and have never given it a second thought. Think about that for a second; we collectively, en masse, simply accepted the idea that life is about survival, not thriving, that happiness is for the lucky few and that it’s better not to pursue your dreams to avoid the inevitable disappointment. And very few of us ever raised our hands and questioned the basis of that belief. Sure, we railed against it, against the unfairness of it all, but what if the whole foundation of this belief is false? What if we can get what we want, but we haven’t been doing so in large part because we decided that we couldn’t? What if all those super-successful people who’ve been telling us to follow our passions and that any one of us could make it weren’t just taunting the unfortunate many, but were telling the truth the whole damn time?

  The Five Basic Steps to Changing Any Belief and Releasing Resistance depends on the recognition that getting what you want is, at least, a possibility. Ask yourself if you actually believe that it is possible for you, or someone like you, to get what you want, even if you have no idea how it will come about. Are you willing even to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, you can and even will get what you want? Will you make that new choice today and keep making it until it becomes an automated decision?

  Crappy Core Belief #3: Beliefs are not a choice

  Like Crappy Core Belief #2, the idea that beliefs are not a choice goes hand in hand with Crappy Core Belief #1 – that there’s only one truth. You’ll see this limitation show up in all walks of life, including religion and science.

  The funny thing about this Crappy Core Belief is that even though it’s widespread, we don’t actually have to rattle that structure too hard to make it fall apart like a house of cards. You see the belief that what we believe is not a choice (accepting a point of view as absolute fact, one we MUST agree with) only works one way. That is to say, we apply it to ourselves, and apply the exact opposite to anyone who disagrees with us.

  Someone who fervently believes that God will smite them if they watch reality TV, for example, or someone who’s decided that all socialists or democrats are idiots, will argue that their belief is the right one, and this is just the way it is. Furthermore, they’ll insist they have no choice but to believe as they do, since any other belief is wrong, or heresy, or blasphemy, or dangerous or just plain stupid. And yet, anyone who doesn’t believe as they do should just change their minds and accept the one ‘truth’, in other words, your incorrect belief is a choice, yet my totally correct one isn’t. It’s really the height of arrogance.

  People who embody this belief don’t even consider that the other person’s point of view represents a valid choice, one that they, themselves might not choose to adopt, but a valid choice nonetheless. They see their opponents as having deliberately and consciously decided not to adopt the truth, but instead do something they blatantly know to be wrong. As you can imagine, these types of people see the world very much in terms of right and wrong, black and white.

  At its heart, this belief invalidates free will. Again, if we are to have true free will, then all choices must be equally valid and equally choosable. Deciding that some (or most) of the options we have access to are actually invalid, that we will be punished for choosing them, or that doing so will bring about the destruction of humanity, or the decline of society, etc., makes free will impossible. You cannot have free will and limit choices at the same time.

  Think about this: anyone who’s ever changed their minds about anything has to admit that, even though they thought they were totally right at some point, they were proven wrong by the very fact that they gathered more data and came to a new conclusion, which contradicted their old perspective. With this acknowledgement has to come the recognition that if they were wrong once, it stands to reason that they could be wrong again. About anything. And they’d have to concede that they chose to adopt a new belief when it made sense to do so. With that concession, Crappy
Core Belief #3 falls apart.

  But, if this belief is so nonsensical and falls apart so easily, why do so many people hold on to it with white-knuckled desperation? This is where it gets a little bit more complicated. You see this core belief is actually intertwined with Crappy Core Belief #1 – that there is only one truth. Because we intrinsically know that there really isn’t only one truth while trying to hold on to the idea that there is, we are always going to be at least a little bit insecure in our views. We can counteract this insecurity, and therefore stabilize the structure of Crappy Core Belief #1, by buying into the idea that we don’t really have a choice in the matter and then blaming the whole debacle on God or logic or morality or [insert whatever other reason you want to (mis-)use for this purpose here].

  You see, when you believe that there is only one right answer and having the wrong answer is a bad, bad thing (you’re going to burn in hell, get ostracized by the community, die alone out on the tundra), your safety and security and possibly even survival lie in being right. No matter what. But, if you’re not totally sure if your belief is actually the one, correct one, you’re going to need either to concede that there is no one right belief, or you’ll have to simply bully all those who disagree with you into submission. If no one is contradicting you, it proves that you’re right. Right? You’re much more likely to follow the second method (bullying) than the first, not because it’s your nature to do so, but because you were taught that this is the way we’ve always done it. So, you find others that agree with you and you fight against anyone who so much as questions whatever conclusion you’re defending. The more afraid you are of being wrong, the more vigorously you’ll fight. You might even try to pass laws that forbid any point of view other than your own. In severe cases, you’ll kill those who won’t openly support your rightness.

  This belief, fragile as it is, actually stabilizes a whole host of other limiting beliefs. It’s what makes it possible for us to hang on to all kinds of illogical conclusions that haven’t served us since the Stone Age. If only one belief can be right (meaning it’s not really a choice) and you HAVE TO BE RIGHT in order to survive, then you’ll spend all your time defending your beliefs rather than exploring them in order to figure out if they are, indeed, the beliefs you want to keep holding on to.

  The Five Basic Steps to Changing Any Belief and Releasing Resistance depend on recognizing that you can choose what to believe and that you can change your perspective at will. You can’t decide which perspective to adopt, if you don’t consider any other perspectives as valid. You can’t change your beliefs, as long as you’re afraid that doing so will damn you or kill you or ruin your life. Luckily, if you’re willing to apply even a teensy bit of logical thinking to this belief, it will fall apart like wet toilet paper.

  All perspectives are valid and meant to be shared and discussed, not debated. Our ability to choose our perspectives (free will) is one of our greatest gifts, and one of the main building blocks of the mechanism of the reality game.

  Crappy Core Belief #4: I’ll believe it when I see it

  We live in an evidence-based, or ‘show me’, world. ‘Let me see it and then I’ll believe it,’ we say. And many, especially the intelligent among us, would argue this is a good system. After all, we don’t want to believe just any old thing, right? We don’t want to be stupid and believe that unicorns and dragons roam the uncharted hills of England. Or do we?

  Stay with me here, I promise not to go off the deep end to try and convince you that Big Foot is real. What I am advocating is that we never rule any possibility out. After all, you can’t prove a negative (you cannot prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Big Foot is NOT real…).

  Let’s do a little review of how we create our holographic reality.

  We focus on something and begin to vibrate at the frequency that this thing represents to us. As we focus on it more, the Law of Attraction causes more energy of that same frequency to join in (it grows) and more and more evidence of that frequency shows up. As we experience this evidence, a desire for something even better is born. We can realize this desire or not.

  This desire will, in that moment, not have a physical representation in our reality. It will merely be an idea, a concept. It’s real in the non-physical, but we have to attune ourselves to its representational frequency in order to experience it. In other words, we have to be willing to focus on something for which we currently have no evidence. We have to be willing to believe it before we can ‘see’ it. If we don’t, we’re not realizing our desire, and will continue to have the same experience over and over again. We receive the same reality over and over again. We’re stuck in the pit, running relentlessly back and forth.

  This isn’t as out there as it sounds. True scientists are dreamers. They have to be. A scientist looking for a breakthrough has to believe that a solution exists, even if they currently don’t know what it is – even if no other human in the history of the world has ever found that solution.

  In fact, this is why we have the tools of ‘imagination’ and ‘faith’ in our reality-manifesting tool belt. ‘What’s that?’ I hear you ask. You didn’t realize that imagination and faith were tools? Well, they are. You see, nothing is wasted. Nothing in your reality is there by chance, by mistake or by coincidence. This applies to the kid kicking the back of your seat on the plane, as well as your characteristics and abilities. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING has its purpose.

  If we consider that this is NOT an unwinnable game, that this game is, in fact, very, very winnable, then doesn’t it make sense that we would have all the tools we need in order to be successful? Well, it turns out that we do. Two of those tools are imagination and faith.

  We often treat imagination as a childhood luxury that has no place in the serious adult world, but it’s actually the mechanism by which we are able to attune ourselves to frequencies that have no representation in our perceivable reality. In fact, this is the way in which we create a new reality, one that’s different from what we can currently see. When we reach for a solution that doesn’t yet exist, we use imagination to line up with it. At first, we might only imagine a very rough solution, a generally positive outcome (or just the idea that a solution exists), but as we continue to focus and let the Law of Attraction do its thing, we will be able to imagine the outcome we want in greater and greater detail. Without the tool of imagination, we couldn’t ever create anything other than what’s already in our reality. We truly do imagine our world into being.

  Faith is the tool that allows us to believe that this solution, which we currently have no evidence to support, can and will actually come about. Without faith, we wouldn’t be able to fully attune ourselves to the frequency of what we’ve imagined. Imagination without faith is fantasy. If you actually want to experience something in your physical reality, you’ll have to have both.

  Unfortunately, faith has come to mean something else entirely in our society. When we talk about faith, we usually mean ‘blind faith’, meaning that we should believe in something that we totally don’t currently believe, without any supporting evidence whatsoever. But faith doesn’t work that way. Remember that no one can convince you of anything; you have to choose to be convinced. Let’s look at the ultimate example of faith – a belief in God. People that truly believe in God do not do so simply because someone told them to. Those who were simply told to have faith might try to believe in God and even defend that belief to the death to avoid facing the idea that they’re really not sure if God exists, but if their own personal criteria for adopting that belief haven’t been met, they won’t.

  Someone who truly believes in God and has no need to defend that belief (their belief is not shaken by someone who doesn’t share it) has invariably had some kind of experience that ‘proved’ it to them. They’ve been presented with enough evidence to allow themselves to fully choose this belief.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t I just contradict myself? Didn’t I just say that you have t
o believe it to see it, and then give you an example of how seeing it can cause you to believe it? Nope. Allow me to clarify.

  Beliefs, especially core beliefs that affect how you see the world and your place in it, aren’t formed (or changed) in an instant. While some smaller beliefs may have resulted from a snap decision, most of them will have been adopted incrementally. The process of forming beliefs is, once again, a progressive one. I hope that you’re beginning to see a pattern here. Nothing in our reality happens instantaneously or in isolation. Nothing just appears or disappears. There’s always, ALWAYS, a Progression. Reality grows into being, and manifestations wax and wane. They gravitate in and out of our reality. You’re never going to have a negative manifestation that wasn’t preceded by negative emotions and loads of negative synchronicities. You’re never going to be able to push something out of your reality, but as you focus on something else, you’ll be able to grow that new thing and watch the old, unwanted thing wither.

  Beliefs are the same way. When you imagine a new solution into being, you do so incrementally. When you’re focused on a problem and you switch to a solution, you’ll be switching from one Progression of a Manifestation, which may be well under way, to a new one. In other words, you’ll be starting off at stage 1 of the new Progression. At first, you’ll only be able to imagine the solution in its most general form – an outline of what you want. Basically, you’ll begin by imagining that a solution has been found. You won’t be able to see exactly how that solution will look, what it will entail, or how it will come about. You’ll simply begin by seeing the problem fixed, which will feel good (your feedback that you’re on the right track). If you try to see a more specific solution, you’ll be trying to jump ahead in the Progression (to stage 3 and beyond), and you’ll lose your alignment – it won’t feel good.