An alternative approach?

An alternative approach…

We see the world the way we expect it to be. While we expect things to be a certain way that is how they will be. When we are not content with that manifestation, we try to manipulate it, to change it, to make it fit with some concept we hold.

Yet all the time we keep holding the sub-conscious belief patterns that create our world all we do when we want change is to try and fix the problem from within the problem. Nothing can change, revolutions may come and go, but on the level that really makes a difference, nothing changes, because we don’t change.

Do you ever wonder about those futuristic movies, ‘Start Trek’, ‘Star Wars’ etc. No matter how far into the future they are set, the humans never change, they still play the same roles that they play now, surely one would hope for some evolution of consciousness!

An alternative approach to what we believe to be ‘real’

Life, as we know it, has arisen from the thoughts and feelings we have put into it.

‘Reality’ is only as real as we want it to be. When a large number of people all subscribe to a particular thought, concept or way of being then that is the manifesting, accepted reality. An individual may have different ideas, but they are often outnumbered, their difference from the collective attracting all sorts of less than pleasant labels.

If Schrodinger was correct when he said that

“Every man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence”

then if we want to change the manifesting reality we need first to change our mind.

The Buddha was reported to have said

“The objective world arises from the mind itself”

The question that arises then is, whose ‘mind’ is responsible for this manifesting reality. Changing our mind is hard enough, especially when we are not even aware of the part we play in co-creating the world. Changing our mind is even more of a challenge when we go looking for our mind. Where is it? Is it truly ‘my’ mind, if it were, shouldn’t I know where to find it, how to identify it? Or do I mistake my personality as my mind?

When we realize that we don’t individually have a mind we can look at what exactly it is that is creating the world we live in. Understanding this is the key to change. Maybe ‘mind’ is the wrong word to use when referring to the self. If we see the self as a biological organism, a system that gathers and interprets data inhabited by the Self (? ‘mind’) we could be getting closer to the source of our manifesting reality.

The more we identify with the workings of this biological organism, the more we become that which we give energy to. This catches us in an ever more complex loop. As we identify with the thoughts and emotions that arise the body creates the chemicals associated with those thoughts and emotions which then present feelings in the body. We assume the feelings are ours, and so continue to manufacture the chemicals that gave rise to the feeling.

Over time this leads us to expect the world to behave in particular ways, if we have any deep rooted anxiety, then the world will appear to be an anxious place, to us. If there is deep, unexpressed violence or anger, then the world will manifest as a violent, angry place. If we are full of joy then the world is a joyful place. Often though the world is a mix of all these things, some present more often than others, depending upon the individual make-up of the personality.

If we come to the place where we recognize that the world is an expression of our expectations, the obvious and the not so obvious, the sub-conscious expectations, then we are on the way to creating deep, sustainable change.

An alternative approach to me means something more fundamental than making a change from within the current reality. It means changing the reality, turning it inside out, exploring options that are so out of the box they haven’t even been thought up yet. Not working with the rules and regulations currently accepted as reality, not a revolution that replaces one system with another system, both of which arise out of the same misconceptions. Not manipulating the environment or others to overcome conflict. Not passing new laws to create a ‘safe’ world but change on such a deep, fundamental level that peace arises naturally, effortlessly, and sustainably out of the mind that we all are a part of.

We have been told often enough to become the change we wish to see in the world. All well and good, yet how do we step outside of all that we have become familiar with? It is so much easier to try and resolve issues and conflict through old, accepted methods, so much easier to blame another.

When we can develop objectivity around ‘our’ points of view the world will change, change in ways we cannot yet imagine. As we let go of our past we allow a new future will unfold.

Try it.