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Choose Your Thoughts, Choose Your Life, by Della Temple

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Taming your inner critic and getting to the core of who you truly are, not whom others think you should be, is a process. It's a process of intentionally choosing your thoughts instead of allowing your inner critic to choose for you. Much like peeling away the layers of an onion, this process of discovering who you truly are takes patience, self-nurturing, and fortitude. But it is possible—and once you find your true essence and live by your own internal wisdom, life is truly delicious!

However, you can't change something until you understand what it is you want to change. The first step then is to bring your awareness to your current story of how you see yourself operating in the world. Start to listen to your inner dialog. Write out some of your worst inner critic statements. Keep a journal of your dominating thoughts. Bring your beliefs of how you view yourself up from the basement of your subconscious and into the light of your awareness. Remember the words spoken to you in judgment or the expectation handed down from your parents. Journaling the story may help to bring all the pieces into focus.

The second step is intent. Do you want to get rid of the energetic imprint of these old beliefs? Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. Often people are tied to their stories because the victim energy feeds their sense of self. If that's where you are, then that's where you are. No judgment, just awareness.

And if by chance you are ready to be something different, intend it to be so. Awareness then intent; that's the process of becoming a conscious creator. As you choose to create new dominating thoughts, you start moving out the energy that's keeping you stuck.

Grounding to the Earth
One of the easiest ways to remove the old beliefs from our space is through a grounding cord. One end of this hollow energy tube attaches to your body and the other end attaches to the center of the earth. The gravitational pull of the earth sucks the energy attached to your old belief from your space, making room for more of your life force. You can attach this grounding cord every morning during meditation, and it will stay in place all day.

As I've done this, day after day, year after year, I've found that my inner critic's voice has diminished. I won't say it's all gone, but it is less bothersome. Now I can tune into my own thoughts about what's best for me. I've changed my dominating thoughts to those of self-worth, compassion and non-judgment.

Exercise: Releasing Your Old Story

1. Sit in Meditation with your feet flat on the floor, and your eyes closed. Take a couple of deep breaths and visualize a wide, hollow tube of energy connected to your hips. This tube falls below your feet, through the floor, and continues down to the center of the planet. Feel this cord anchoring into the core of the earth. This hollow energy cable serves as a vacuum cleaner sucking the energetic baggage right out of your aura and returning it to Mother Earth, where it will be recycled and returned to its original essence.
2. Imagine energy, the thoughts and feelings of others, the shoulds and expectations of the world, drop right out of your body and fall down the grounding cord. Let it all go. Give your body permission to release all that stress, all that foreign energy. You don't need to store it in your body. Release it all.
3. This grounding cord stays in place the entire day, continually vacuuming up all the gunk in your aura and returning it to the earth. Take a couple of deep breaths, open your eyes, get up and walk around. Imagine your grounding cord still in place. It moves when you do, allowing you complete mobility. Anytime during the day that you begin to feel weighed down by your old beliefs and thoughts of unworthiness, imagine this grounding cord removing those toxic thoughts and feelings from your energy field. Feel the rush as all that foreign energy leaves your aura and moves back to the earth.

As you remove the shoulds and expectations of others from your energy field, you empty out. And, as you know, nature abhors a vacuum. So instead of filling right back in with more of the same nasty inner critic energy, you can consciously "fill up" with energies more in alignment with your new dominating thoughts. As you consciously choose to align yourself with energies that feel good to you, there's less room for your old stories to reside.

Calling Back Our Life Force
One of the best ways of bringing new energies into your body and aura is to use a tool called Golden Sun.

The Golden Sun has two functions; one is to call back our life force so that we can function at our full potential. The other is to offer us a way to replace the foreign energy leaving our body via the grounding cord with energies that are more in alignment with who we truly are. When we fill in with energies such as peace, love, and self-acceptance, we dilute the power of the lower vibrational energies (fear, anger, resentment), offering us one more way to tame our inner critic.

The grounding cord and the golden sun are what I call "foundational tools." I use them every day to help me remove the thoughts and feelings of other people from my body and aura.

Exercise: Filling In With A Golden Sun

1. Sit quietly with your feet on the floor, and your eyes closed. Take a couple of deep breaths. Imagine a gigantic Golden Sun, about three times the size of your body, above your head. See the sun filled with golden light. Now place a giant magnet in this sun, and ask the magnet to call back your scattered energy from past events, and from time spent at your job or with family and friends. Feel all that energy zoom back into the Golden Sun.
2. Imagine that energy being cleansed and restored to the frequency that's just right for your body. This is your life force energy.
3. Next, fill this Golden Sun with relaxation, peace, abundance, self-validation, or whatever quality would most benefit you at this moment. See those qualities permeate the sun, vibrating at a frequency that's just right for your body.
4. Now imagine reaching up and popping the Golden Sun. Let the deflated sun's beneficial qualities flow into your aura and fill in every cell and membrane of your body.
5. Feel yourself refreshed and enveloped in a cocoon of energies that are just right for you today. The world around you can be full of chaos and turmoil, but when you're filled with your own energy, you can be relaxed, free from stress and turmoil.
6. Sit in this wonderfully peaceful space of relaxation and fullness for a moment or two. When you're ready, open your eyes and notice how you feel. Your body may be vibrating a little bit faster, or you may feel a bit more focused or present.

When you are "full of yourself," filled to the brim with your unique life force energy, there's less room in your aura for mind chatter. It's free, it's easy, and it's oh so comforting.

And finally, if the old story tries to reattach, just remember that you are in control. You've turned the page, and you're becoming something more. Tell those old dominating thoughts, "Oh, I remember you. You're that story that's trying to keep me small. I've outgrown you, and I am something different now, so please go away." Send those thoughts down your grounding cord and then fill in with the Golden Sun full of energy in alignment with your new dominating thoughts. Be in control. Be the master of your universe.

Choose your thoughts—choose your life.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2015. All rights reserved.

After ten years plus on this spiritual journey, I find myself riddled with more confusion and questions than ever. Here's one: If positive thinking and purity of heart is our natural state, then why is it so difficult to overcome our negativity? Once we realize our natural state, shouldn't it just become natural? I was raised in a family and social environment that destroyed my self-esteem and emotional stability, but I worked hard to overcome my issues and grow. Oddly, the more I sought change, the more I lost. This includes losing some fantastic people I loved. If these people loved me then, and I was working on becoming a better person, why would they fall away? Wouldn't "the Universe" seek to keep me surrounded with love? After all this time, I am still pushing that stone up the mountain. Why does it feel heavier and more impossible to push? Throughout, my intention has been to align with Spirit, do better and be a better person. Time and time again, I slip back into my old habits and feel so weak or abandoned by Spirit. If I desire to be "awake," then why doesn't "the Universe" acknowledge that desire with support? Millions of people are still "asleep" and I choose to awaken - why isn't this act blessed in and of itself? Mostly, I have found myself completely alone on this journey. It is often sad and painful. My prayers are not being answered. Moreover, though I've discovered what I am meant to do in life creatively, I have found no success doing it. As the song says, "Where is the Love?" Thanks for reading.

A.

Dreamchaser:

Thank you for bringing this issue to light. Every person who has ever walked this path has felt exactly like you do time and time again.

One of the most common assumptions about adopting a spiritual path is the idea that things will get easier. That is a profound misconception, for instead, things tend to get harder because you have to experience more challenges in order to grow more than people who choose to stay "unenlightened."

Did you begin this path to get rewards? Did you assume that just because you were living "right," you would enjoy a trouble free life? I say this all the time, but Jesus Christ was homeless and got murdered at a young age. There are many examples in whatever "Bible" you follow of great suffering while traveling the "path." At the same time, you have to remember that there is also great joy mentioned.

I explain all the time that life is like a spiral, not an upward climb. As we grow, we move around the spiral. As we learn, we move to a new level. For example, when we are done learning all the first grade lessons, we get promoted to the second grade. We are still learning all the same things such as math, science and history, but we are in a new class, with new books, desks, views, kids and a new teacher. We are in the same school, but in a different room. That is why things keep looking the same over and over, yet you KNOW you have been growing.

You are always surrounded by love. You are asking for romantic love. This is one of the hardest lessons that we humans have to learn, in my opinion. We have to learn that love only exists on the inside of us. "Intimacy" can also be pronounced "in to me see." EVERYTHING starts on the inside of us. Until you fully love yourself, you will not manifest a positive, strong, working romantic relationship.

If it is not happening on the outside, the reason is because you do not have it happening on the inside. You have SO much love inside yourself, but you still do not believe that you can have the relationship of your dreams. Look inside yourself and seek the reasons for your experiences.

We all go through times of darkness and times of light. When it is light, we are having fun, and the time seems to pass very quickly. When it is dark, the time seems to drag by, and nothing is easy, fun or happy. You are in a time of extreme darkness. The good news is that times of darkness DO pass. The sun WILL dawn on a brand new day, so to speak.

Look inside yourself to find the love you long for.

I wish you wholeness.

*****

Astrea:

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, all of us human beings are on a Spiritual Journey from the moment we are born on Earth. With our free will we select mates, political heroes and religious rituals. We make our own luck by making right choices as much as we possibly can. We create love or a lack of it for ourselves, and no one else is responsible for what we manifest.

Sometimes we definitely GOOF. At that point, we can choose to leave the past behind and move forward with our lives, or to sit down and wallow in the wrong choices we've made in self-pity. Many people choose sadness because they UNDERSTAND it, and it feels familiar and safe to them. They feel they've grown and changed, and many times, they have - but not enough to judge their own or anyone else's connection to Spirit. If this journey is making you angry, choose another path. If something isn't working for you, you can try something else.

From your questions, I can tell that you are about halfway through your Journey, that you have somewhat grown and changed, but you are still seeking some kind of value from your experiences, either to be acknowledged for coming from Darkness, or to be given some kind of REWARD. That isn't how Enlightenment works. Where did you get the idea that a spiritual path would always feel good?

Our inner state is always fluctuating. What was natural for you yesterday could feel extreme for you today. Human beings make human mistakes and choices. If the consequence of a choice is always sadness, make a different choice! By complaining that you're not receiving any "payback" from your "enlightenment," you block ANYTHING positive from coming to you.

Enlightenment is about peaceful acceptance and gratitude for the abundance in your life. The Universe is NOT responsible for your happiness - you are. Right action will bring what you want into your life, so you must not have found right action yet. You're resisting the TRUST aspect of enlightenment.

You seem to think that you've achieved enlightenment over and above the "millions of people who are asleep." If you had, you wouldn't feel out of touch, and CERTAINLY would not feel abandoned by Spirit! The free will choices we make that create drama and conflict for ourselves and others are NOT Spirit's doing or responsibility. How can you hear anything the Universe is trying to say to you if you keep yourself in agitation, anger, misery, and suffering? Spirit is telling me to tell you to "Be quiet! Hush! You are talking, but not listening!"