The Roots of Change

Who are you? Exactly who you think you are.

Last week’s blog spoke about our habits and how they both define us and keep us stuck at times.  I wrote about the importance of  bringing awareness to our habits and how that pertains to change in our lives. But what is the energy wherein habits emerge? If a habit is the end result what is it’s force of origination?This week we go deeper, working backwards, to explore what creates our habits and illuminate how it is these deeper beliefs, the ones we may not be consciously aware of, that create our experience of the world around us. Just as the roots of a tree effect the health and vitality of a tree our roots of belief effect our whole world. To create change, to transform anything, we need to get to the root of the issue. The belief behind the effect.
But first ….
I think it’s important we start with  basic concepts regarding the idea of  manifesting, the concept of infusing thought with originating spirit and bringing that thought to form.  It’s a buzz word these days in new age circles and has been all the rage with movies like “The Secret” and because of this I think it‘s meaning varies. So, with a need to be on the same page as you, my reader, I feel a little clarification is in order. From my very rudimentary knowledge  manifesting goes something like this.  We manifest in our lives what we are and what we are is what we contemplate (or think).  This is important and it my opinion what the movie “The Secret” neglected to mention. In that movie there was great emphasis put on what “you want”. What you think you “need more of”. More money. Better health. These are great things no doubt. But wanting those things and believing you are those things are two very different things. So, keep this is mind as we go deeper. We manifest in our lives who we think ourselves to be.

"Thought is cause: experience is effect. If you don't like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking."
~ Marianne Williamson


For example…

 If you have the thought “ I want (or need) more money” and at the same time have the underlying (probably unconscious) belief “I’ll never get rich doing this” you have a misalignment of creative animating  energy. What’s more, the very thought “I need more money” is in actuality being motivated from a place of lack(a misalignment again) and thus more situations that reflect lack will show up in your life since that is the originating belief.  Like a puzzle whose pieces fit together the resonance from the originating thought attracts the conditions that support it . Another way of looking at this is, if you are coming from a place of lack ("I need more" implies you don’t have enough) what you will perceive will be the lack around you so that is the life experience you will have.

We manifest and perceive what we are, those underlying beliefs, not what it is "we" want. Say,  you struggle with weight. You may want to thinner and will continue to have a difficult time losing and keeping weight off because of have a deeper (maybe even unconscious) belief that it's too hard, you don't deserve it, everyone in your family struggles with weight, you are afraid of being accountable for your life ... With core beliefs such as this you will sabotage yourself every time until the surface belief (what you want) matches the core belief (what you are). So to really change, to heal, we have to go deep. Beyond the surface ideas of what we want and don’t want and into the places that we believe ourselves to be. We have to go to the levels that animate our reality, create our perceptions, and where our resonance attracts it's likeness. Get to the roots to find why the tree is sick.

Enter the meme.

What’s a meme you ask? They are the “cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena”. Whew. In essence memes are the many beliefs that create our identity. Memes are our histories, our stories, our habitual beliefs about ourselves and the world around us that we have learned from those around us and our culture. And at some point we adopt like through osmosis as our own. So pervasive are these memes and so ingrained that we rarely even notice them, and therein lies the rub. Seemingly innocuous memes are anything but. For example, the emerging science of epigenetcis denotes that hereditary accounts for about 25% of our health issues. Further more even within that 25% new research is showing our DNA is effected by what we are thinking   (it’s amazing stuff to contemplate). What we think about ourselves is important. Really important. It means we can contemplate our way right into healing or illness, peace or frustration, habit or freedom.Our brains interpret our emotional responses and our bodies react in turn no matter if the threat is perceived (ie a fearful thought) or a real physical threat. What we think and believe matters and that is great news!  Because it’s more difficult to change our genetics than to change what we think (or is that just a meme?) It means we have so much more creative power in our lives and health than we may have ever imagined. It means when we can change our beliefs to reflect our divinity we resonate at a frequency that attracts it into our lives.

So what are the memes you own in you life?



Now getting a little closer to home and the memes get a little more personal. What memes did you learn from your family?  Did you learn that you had to excel, achieve, get good grades to be somebody (not sure what that even means “be somebody“ who is somebody)? Did you learn that you had to "follow the rules" to be accepted or food meant love? Did you learn that your body was meant to be ignored, pushed, or shaped to be either idealized or shamed? Did you learn that being “good” meant being quiet? Did you learn you weren’t good at something? Were you labeled in some way?  I remember being told as a kid I was terrible at math. I just didn’t have “that kind  brain” and I believed it. I was terrified in every math class I had to take. Then a magical thing happened in college. I met a professor that said you are not bad at math you just need to learn it differently than the way it is traditionally taught. Not sure if it was his new technique that helped or it was his challenging my ingrained meme in a powerful way but it finally clicked for me and I was no longer  terrified of numbers. And from then on I did fine in class.

“Looking back you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life- and it was you. It is not too late to find that person again.” 
Robert Brault

 So look at those memes, those deep beliefs you carry. The ones hiding under the surface of your conscious awareness.  Which ones are you choosing to believe? Because if you look really closely at your memes they become your habits and they become your excuses and they become the reasons why you seemly cannot change, and why you keep getting the same results in your life. "It’s too hard, I'm too old, I'm too young, It's hereditary, I'm  too busy, I can’t afford it, I’m not good at math, it’s easier, everyone does it"…Isolate your excuse and you find the meme behind it. Trace it back to the root belief that's chaining you to an experience that's reflecting your fear not your truth.

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves".  ~Victor Frankl

Our memes are the links to the chains that create our ego identity (our separate false selves) linked together from our histories, our underlying beliefs about the world and about ourselves. Change is so difficult, because it asks us to step outside of the memes, dismantle the chain of our identity  and try a different way. Change asks us to question our beliefs (what was) and our very sense of self. It's about  giving up the comfort of what you thought you knew for something else you don’t know at all. It’s about giving up our false self  identity and allowing ourselves to instead unfold. Of just being instead of defining. Of opening ourselves up to what is without knowing the outcome. It's allowing the tree of our divinity to do what trees do best. To simply just grow. No help from us needed.

When we align not with our ego selves but divine nature it may be necessary to jump off that cliff into the unknown.

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security."
~ Gail Sheehy

 Not sure about you but most times I need a push off that cliff, even though freedom is exactly what I've asked for. That’s why so often change comes as a crisis, a conflict, a challenge that lights a fire in our lives that makes an alternative better than the current circumstances. When  we must jump off the cliff because where we are standing has become quicksand.
This is why we can really be motivated to change when we get sick of being sick, fat, angry, addicted etc. When we can say to ourselves "OK this is so bad that something else has to be better". When we are faced with a crisis and our pain motivates us to wake up and take the leap we so feared. Realizing after we take the leap there was a hand there to catch us all the while and the shadows that we so feared were not even there. Which is the gift of change...realizing when we surrender to the flow, give up our control, we remember the co-creative power we have always had reflecting a peace and harmony undefinable in words.

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 Our memes are the way we limit ourselves and our excuses are evidence of our misalignment with our divine nature that require an awareness and a shift in belief. I am going to go deeper down that path next week but for this week I want you to notice the excuses you have about what you think you cannot do. Dig deep to the root and excavate your memes about yourself, your life, your health, your kids. Anything that isn’t serving your greater good. Not all memes are incorrect but we aren’t worried about the ones that bring you joy. We want to find the links in the chain that are keeping you stuck. Next week we learn how to undo the chain this week just find the links.
We are infinite being having an human experience- meant to be free from chains. When we get rid of the ways we limit ourselves we can manifest amazing things. We can decide to change what is happening in our lives at any time,  at any moment,  if we are conscious enough to realize what we are experiencing is exactly our creation. No exceptions.  A new life begins in every second of the present.When our creative power is rightly aligned with our divine nature (and not our scared ego selves) we have no choice but to tap into the field of unlimited possibilities where there are no rules and anything is possible. Anything…I promise.

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this."
-- Henry David Thoreau