Prosperity Engine — Update — Conquering the Past
We all have some desire for the future. Some desires are stronger than others. Most people don’t realize that there are two desires at work in each individual, and the desire in conscious thought is the weak one. The hidden, subconscious desire is the one that’s in control. And it’s usually, by default, based on the past.
Some people are aware of the notion that roughly 1% of the population knows something the rest of us don’t. That’s why they’re so rich. But that’s changing. Humanity was introduced to such awareness with the likes of Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich, 1937) and Rhonda Byrne (The Secret, 2006). Refinements keep being made. New discoveries are added to our base of common knowledge with each passing year.
And some people may say that the super rich are that way because of “connections,” “born that way” or “corruption.” Certainly, there are some of these things involved with some people. But how did the “connections” happen? How did the originator of a fortune get there in order to hand it down to their children? A big part of it is attitude—subconscious attitude.
I grew up with the “everybody knows” idea that the subconscious can’t be touched. It remains the unknown. Well, that former “truth” is being destroyed. It takes work to increase our awareness of the subconscious, but more and more people are doing it. More and more people are changing their subconscious.
And because the subconscious is the powerhouse that controls the future, some people are no longer baffled by conscious thoughts that want to go in one direction, and a life that goes in an entirely different direction.
The subconscious has been the source of great self-sabotage, but only because we have not taken responsibility for it. When we do take control of the subconscious, we can then get it to work for us, rather than against us. This is the primary work of building our Prosperity Engine. Being in the “Creative Now” and clarifying our “Designed Future” are relatively easy by comparison.
The dark and dirty subconscious is one of the key reasons the Law of Attraction doesn’t seem to work for a lot of people. Ironically, the Law of Attraction is always working, but always from the hidden subconscious—hidden until now.
As best as I can figure, the subconscious (attention or feeling) mind is closest to the gateway leading from the physical “awareness unit” and the true spiritual self. Whatever sits in the subconscious is the text of our prayers to God. So, we have to shake our head in wonder at the disconnect between our conscious prayers and the results we invariably get. But now, we know why, and we have a way to fix that disconnect.
Built of the Past
[image error]Old wooden bridge carrying us to where we want to go. Photo: #2769777 by JerzyGorecki (CC0) Pixabay.
The subconscious mind is an accumulation of “feeling” memories of past events. Most of us have a mixed bag of good and bad experiences. But we tend to focus more on the bad, because they seem more important for our survival. After all, the subconscious is part of the survival strategy of this life form called Homo sapiens.
Inspired by the work of David Bayer, I realized that all of the beliefs stored in the subconscious are the result of a specific sequence:
Event > Emotion > Decision > Belief
And our work, here, will involve another sequence to interrupt the old beliefs, so we can replace them with new, more empowering ones.
Observe > Extract > Inspire > Decide > Belief
This starts with the observation of an old belief, or the feeling and the meaning attached to it. This is followed by extracting the meaning from our observation. Then, we use inspiration to sculpt a new meaning on that type of event or topic. And finally, we decide to implement that new meaning, which gives us our new, more empowering belief.
Most of the subconscious was built up by the age of 4, or possibly as late as age 6. This period—from conception just past infancy—contains very little in the way of conscious memories. Our analytical minds had not yet become fully formed to understand such things.
There are exceptions, of course. I was startled to remember an incident where I knew I didn’t understand much of the language being spoken—my first language this lifetime: English! In other words, I was very young. I remember a set of white shelves near a door, a toy that had been left several feet away in the darker part of the room, and my mother standing over me, yelling and pointing. Toy—bottom shelf—not returned—guilt—confusion. I had thought I was being good and conscientious, but the evidence burned into my young brain: incompetence! I asked my mother about the white shelves and the space reserved for my toys on the bottom. She said I was 9 months old when we lived there. February 1951, I was still not proficient with English, but I had a vivid memory of the event.
That feeling of “incompetence” had haunted me for years. It had made my work more difficult, blinded me to opportunities, trashed my ability to get along with people, made me more critical of others and more defensive about my own mistakes. Ouch! Nasty stuff. And the only way to resolve such a mess is to take full responsibility for it.
“But, but, but,… my mother!” Bull! Life will always give us things to learn, but we are the ones pulling in the opportunities to learn. When we assume this more powerful viewpoint, then we can no longer be a victim; only then can we start creating a brilliant future.
So, how do we clean up the past so we’re not tripping over our own hidden intentions?
Meditation
[image error]Lighthouse, signal and Moon. A message from the past concerning our Prosperity Engine. Image: #2651524 by PIRO4D (CC0) Pixabay.
One of the simplest ways to start cleaning the past is through meditation.
There are a number of methods for meditation. The simplest is to “be here” in the “Creative Now.”
With all potential distractions removed, sit comfortably and clear your mind. Don’t force it. And don’t become frustrated by thoughts that interrupt your mental quiet. In fact, be grateful for each interruption. Simply cast your awareness in the direction of the unruly thought and let it go, reasserting the quiet awareness of the present moment.
Our objective is not to clean up the past, but simply to be aware of the interrupting thoughts. By doing this we are actually doing some preliminary cleaning, but this is a byproduct of the simple exercise of being in the “Creative Now.”
Another form of meditation is somewhat more aggressive. This actively looks for interrupting thoughts and examines them thoroughly for their feeling and any meanings attached to them, and then assigns them a newer, more empowering significance.
The Daily ‘Work’
Coach and business consultant, David Bayer (Mind Hack), describes this approach as “the work.” It involves interruptions in our daily life that cause a negative emotion—frustration, worry, anger, resentment and the like.
Whenever anything like this occurs, we need to stop, mentally, look at the feeling and any meaning attached to it, and to give it a new, more empowering meaning. If we’ve been doing this awhile, we likely have an assortment of positive feelings and meanings all set up to help us with this task. Once the feeling has its new meaning, we need to activate it with gratitude.
Remember, the subconscious doesn’t understand conscious thoughts; it only understands feelings. The more deeply we can feel the gratitude, the more traction we have with the subconscious.
A New Power Tool
[image error]Out of the past we find secrets for building our Prosperity Engine. A steampunk clock. Image: #1636156 by 3209107 (CC0) Pixabay.
David Bayer warns his clients not to use questions that begin with “why” or “how” because they are so open-ended and quite often too negative. Bayer points out that the brain is a wonderfully powerful search engine which produces lots of results for every question we give it—the good, the bad and the ugly. And, quite often, such questions return potently negative answers which are not helpful. The answers usually weaken or burden us, instead of empowering us.
But think about this. The subconscious is dark and mysterious—difficult to examine. Finding all of the negative beliefs, which send our life in the wrong direction, remains a thorny challenge. Why not use these “prohibited” questions as tools for getting the subconscious to reveal its secrets?
Asking such questions from the viewpoint of frustration could make our life more difficult, but asking these questions from the clever viewpoint of strategic self-empowerment, we should produce only positive results.
So, here’s the strategy. In order to scrub the subconscious entirely clean—and yes, it will take lots of work—we can do the following:
Find an area of our life which bothers us,Ask, “Why is my life this way?” or some other more specific question to ensure we get more specific answers,Write down every answer our brain gives us. Expect a flood of answers.Examine the feelings and write down, as specifically as possible, the emotions generated by the question.For each feeling, write down any meaning which seems to be attached to it. Example: if we feel dread, the meaning might be something like, “My life will end tomorrow.” And there may be more than one meaning attached; so write them all down.For each of the meanings and answers on our list, let inspiration deliver an empowering, new meaning to replace it. The best new meaning will frequently be opposite in its intent, but not always.Find a way to be deeply grateful for the new meaning of each one. The powerful feeling of gratitude is what makes this work.
Remember, feeling is the language of the subconscious (attention) mind, while thoughts are the language of the conscious (awareness) mind.
Trying Out the ‘Why’ Experiment
2020:0912
I’ll start this with a MINOR barrier so I can concentrate on streamlining the “Why-Question” process of digging out the “dust” of the past.
So, what’s a real, light-weight problem?
I’m noticing a fear that I’ll discover my light-weight problem to be my largest “monster.” But that’s okay; I’m committed to this task, no matter what happens. One way or another, it will be a learning experience.
Here’s the question that came to mind:
Why can’t I stay on top of all my responsibilities, to keep the room clean, to do my exercises regularly, to do my work on-time, etc.?
And here are the answers which came to me:
Because I’m dumb and stupid.Because I’m ignorant.Because I’m weak.Because I’m easily distracted.Because I’m hiding a dark secret.Because, if I’m successful, I’ll pull in (attract) the karma I’ve been avoiding.
Analysis and Thoughts
Goosebumps!
That hit a nerve! And there it is: the dark secret of “bad” karma I’ve been avoiding: my betrayal, brutal murder, selfish greed, selfish attachment, insistence on pampering “me” even if others suffer, suppressing guilt as a sign of weakness and love and generosity as signs of stupidity.
In the past, my writing has been confrontational, at times, and in part, it seems, because I wanted to provoke someone into “assassinating me.” What a curious idea that is. One might think I had watched too many crime movies. And while such input could be the source of such a “hidden” thought, belief or feeling, it’s also possible that such input (movies) could be “evidence” to back up the belief which came far earlier.
Now, some who read this may not believe in reincarnation. But such beliefs are a form of implied omniscience. They remain an implied claim that the disbeliever “knows everything,” so their dismissal of reincarnation is accurate and right.
Well, I don’t know everything, and I’ve benefited from erasing the trauma from hundreds of past lives. Reincarnation is also a part of the traditions of the Jews (Christ’s disciples talked about it; the Kabbalists talk about it even today), the Cathars and the Celts (Julius Caesar marveled at such a belief), and we even have scientific evidence (not yet proof) that strongly supports reincarnation as a fact and reality of life.
But let us keep our focus on what we are really after. If the idea of reincarnation is in any way false, but using it produces the results we are after, then the idea acts as a placebo or leverage toward our goal. We can hammer out the actual details later, if we are interested.
Karma (what Christ called “reaping what we sow” or “dying by the sword by which we have lived”) is merely an opportunity to take responsibility for what we have created. It’s a learning exercise. If we learn it fully, without getting “whacked” as we had whacked others in a past life, then we can skip the suffering. That’s my current take on it. But if we get stuck on “avoiding” the suffering, we will end up creating the suffering. The guiding principle, here, is that whatever sticks in our attention we tend to get more of.
Tikkun Olam—‘Healing the World’
[image error]Reality as chipped paint peeling off of a wall, extracting information needed for building our Prosperity Engine. Image: #470798 by Mysticsartdesign (CC0) Pixabay.
The Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam—“Healing the World” or “Perfecting the World”—is one of the key purposes of the Sabbath or holy day. The more I learn, the more it seems that the true purpose of the Sabbath was not about resting in the sense of laziness or idleness, but more about the idea of putting aside earthly distractions to concentrate on spiritual awakening.
The “healing of the world” involves cleaning up our own darkness. And yes, darkness is another word for “evil.” Darkness, in this sense, is a lack of awareness and also a lack of responsibility.
The light of awareness makes us conscious of that which hides in the darkness so that we can take responsibility for it. And while writing my book, Four Elements of God, I came to realize that responsibility and the persistence of time are opposites. When we take full responsibility for something—find the “truth” of it—we find ourselves free of it, because we have removed the time dimension from it. Thus, Christ’s statement that the truth shall set us free takes on an entirely new meaning—one far more profound and empowering.
What we handle in the “Work” David Bayer talked about is the same mechanism and energy which powers karma. The subconscious, by default, is a reservoir of stuck attention. When we do something bad, we feel imbalanced; our dichotomous ego struggles toward finding balance. The result of that is karma. Quite often, karma isn’t triggered until the next lifetime, when our hardened heart has become softened by a new viewpoint.
“The Lord is longsuffering [patient], and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Numbers 14:18).
Even the disciples in Christ’s time misunderstood this, thinking that the innocent children would pay for the crimes of their ancestors. But this is wrong thinking. A passage found in Ezekiel clears up any confusion.
“As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, spoiled his brother by violence, and did that which is not good among his people, lo, even he shall die in his iniquity.
“Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.
“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him” (Ezekiel 18:18–20).
Only the guilty pay for their own crimes. The reasoning is clear: the Bible is talking about reincarnation. Even Jesus, when he said that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, we know this is not the case, literally. Too many criminals die peacefully of old age, never having suffered as they made others suffer. But remember, God is “longsuffering” (patient). The guilty will frequently pay for their crimes three or four generations hence—when they’ve had sufficient time to live our their life of crime, die, be born again of the flesh, and grow up to the point where they can appreciate the “boomerang” they had thrown decades earlier.
Implications
If you’ve been paying attention, here, you may be realizing about now that the work of cleaning up the subconscious involves more than the physical memories of the current body. In order to obtain a sparkling clean subconscious, with a broad, wide-open pipeline from conscious thought, directing its every feeling, we may need to clean up hundreds, thousands or even millions of years of beliefs, intentions and karma.
Yikes! That sounds like a lot. But trust me, it gets easier with practice. In fact, each one of us can get so good at doing this “work” that we clear up entire chains of similar incidents merely by casting our conscious awareness in their direction.
Karma can only exist in darkness.
So long as we don’t look at the negative past, we keep the darkness and the bad karma alive. Eventually, something in our environment will trigger the karma with disastrous results, especially if we resist it. If we maintain gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the lessons of karma, then we will dissolve the victim-perpetrator cycle and will have, to that degree, taken responsibility for it.
But why wait to trigger the karma? Why not be proactive and take responsibility before the karma is triggered?
And this gives me an idea for a new book. One more to add to my long list. What’s interesting, though, is that my interest keeps shifting as I do my own work on my subconscious. Some of the book and video projects on my list are becoming less interesting and less important. They were borne out of a different set of values and beliefs. I’m finding it easier and easier to trash dozens or even hundreds of hours of work, simply because I’m no longer that person.
Finishing the Exercise
But let’s get back to my “Why-Question” experiment. Now, I need to take the negative beliefs (answers to my “Why” question) and build a more empowering base.
Because I’m dumb and stupid.NEW: Humility helps me maximize the intelligence I’ve been given.Because I’m ignorant.NEW: Humble confidence to do the “work” of cleaning up the past is allowing me to keep improving my awareness of where I am and what needs to be done.Because I’m weak.NEW: Persistence and repetition is making me stronger every day.Because I’m easily distracted.NEW: With humility and confidence, and by taking responsibility for everything that touches me, I am mastering my focus.Because I’m hiding a dark secret.NEW: With each passing day, the darkness in my subconscious is disappearing, being replaced by the light of awareness and responsibility.Because, if I’m successful, I’ll pull in (attract) the karma I’ve been avoiding.NEW (first attempt): I’m committed to the success no matter what the dangers.NEW (second attempt): I can have the success without the dangers of karma. [Still too negative.]NEW (third attempt): I have both the success of which I’ve dreamed and the grateful responsibility for completed karma.
Of course, I followed each one of these with gratitude for the “new” meaning.
More Discussion and Implications
[image error]An old hallway, perhaps somewhere we’ve been before, but now a needed clue to building our Prosperity Engine. Photo: #4058017 by Tama66 (CC0) Pixabay.
“Completed karma” is a new idea which needs both exploring and explaining.
One way to complete karma is to suffer a karma-driven tragedy, followed by humble gratitude and forgiveness. This is not recommended. I don’t wish suffering on anyone, even though none of us is without “sin.”
Another way is through self-discovery and faith—to take full responsibility for the source of the karma before it is reactively triggered. If a person attempts this approach out of fear of suffering, they will end up suffering, for that is where we find the focus of their attention. Remember, Christ said not to resist evil. Dismiss it; be determined not to participate; but never resist it.
Even then, if suffering happens, the person needs to be grateful for the suffering, for that releases all attachments to the victim-perpetrator chain of karmic (egoistic) action.
I feel relatively certain that suffering is not a necessary ingredient for “karmic release” (the result of completed karma). But the level of commitment, faith and responsibility likely needs to be equivalent to the level of true forgiveness that would otherwise be required with the suffering which would otherwise accompany the karmic triggering. In other words, we can’t be flippant and offer a half-hearted nod of pseudo-responsibility in the direction of the karmic source. This doesn’t mean effort or difficulty, but it does need to be open, and complete (paramita, perfect, spiritual). We have to do this from the level of miracles—utter humility to the possibility of paying for the crimes of making others suffer with our own suffering in the present, but confidence that such physical tit-for-tat isn’t entirely necessary—confident that God will accept our pure-hearted responsibility as “payment in full.”
Could I be wrong about this? Absolutely, but I don’t think the objective of this universe is to balance every crime with another crime, for that would become a never-ending dance.
Suffering is not the purpose of this universe, but it is a tool to help us measure our distance from God. And yet there are other methods—more positive ways—to measure our closeness to God. Performing miracles is one. Generosity and acts of anonymous, unconditional love are another.
The bottom line here is that we work toward cleaning up the past in order to help us build our Prosperity Engine.
Coming Up Next
In the next article, we look at polishing the future by adding clarity to our goals.
