ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Question Your Questions!
The RIGHT Question is…
Who am I here to be as the 21st Century New Human Being?
If you are an entrepreneur, is your business reflecting you as a New Human Being? Or are you still patterning your business on 20th Century ideas? Values?
In your work, whether in your own business or as an employee, are you serious about fulfilling your purpose or are you just doing a job?
If you are not working, does your life reflect your values or are you waiting for some future event or date? Have you given away your power or are you empowered to be who you were born to be?
In the United States we have been subjected to an amazing number of heated battles over topics that most had thought long ago agreed upon as a nation. One wonders why these topics are being resurrected and debated yet again. The answer is that the 21st Century New Human Being threatens the old ways that some wish would return. The values of the 21st Century reflect a new consciousness and business, politics, life must adjust to the new consciousness.
Even family life is adjusting. Everyone is busy. Everyone is plugged into their personal electronics and we walk around wishing to be left alone until we need something from each other. At the same time, we connect with Facebook friends, we tweet about our lives and keep up with others on Twitter, we have professional networks on LinkedIn, we email and surf the net. We are connected in constant ways with others around the world. And ask any server in a restaurant and they will tell you what percentage of diners are sitting at the table on their smart phones!
But are we connected to our inner selves? Are you going inside to seek your answers or are you waiting for the next email or Facebook post or Tweet? Are you expecting someone else to give you the answers or are you actively seeking them through your own inner connections to guidance?
The New Human has a well-developed intuition and sense of Soul Purpose in the 21st Century. As we evolve, we will develop even better perceptions through our sixth sense than through the five physical senses. Telepathic conversation will become the norm. Everyone will be ‘psychic.’ We are moving in this direction.
So who would be frightened by this evolution? Perhaps someone who is lying is afraid that you might telepathically perceive the lie. Maybe someone who has been selfish or greedy is afraid that the New Human will want to live in connected community and will want the possessions that have been so assiduously amassed or hoarded. Perhaps someone who is ‘doing just fine, thank you’ is afraid of change and wants things to be less complicated than they appear to be now.
We can never get inside the head of another person but we are seeing a divide occur between groups who might not even be aware of the values that the divide reflects.
I heard the statement made by a father who lost his son in the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Americans are getting caught up on both sides of a discussion of how to stop gun violence but maybe they are asking the wrong questions. This bereaved father was not playing on emotion – he went back to founding documents for the Great American Experiment and quoted this from the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson:
“…certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This father pointed out that Jefferson and the founding fathers were very deliberate in their choice of words for this important document. ‘Life’ is listed before ‘Liberty.’ Perhaps society is asking the wrong questions if it is addressing ‘Liberty’ before ‘Life.’
How are you asking the wrong questions about your Life, your Business, your views, your values, your relationships? Are you coming from a point of view that doesn’t allow the winds of change to shift you from a fixed position? Are you unconsciously clinging to old ideas that might have worked in days past but are no longer applicable to the evolving 21st Century New Human Being?
I challenge you to question your questions!
PS: Are you asking yourself the right questions? If you need help consider Rosemary’s special offer; this expires on February 14! Take advantage of this offer, a “Compass Call” with Rosemary: that’s a quick dive with her into Dimensional Exploration for a very affordable price; she calls it “15 for 50″ and you can get it here for a limited time. You can even consider giving this to your special Valentine!
Buy it here:
INSPIRATION FROM ROSEMARY: Winds of Change
Rosemary’s video for the week: Winds of Change:
MONDAY’S POEM
I wrote this in keeping with this concept I explored Friday: that our brain is a repository for not only all past events but all future potential as well!
Time Machine
What if we could travel
Back in time,
Access all of history,
Learn from their stories?
What if we could travel
Far ahead,
See all that we become,
Learn from their stories?
Would we change a thing from them
Or learn to forgive?
Would we change a thing for them
Or forgive ourselves?
We are that time machine
Holding all of history,
Holding precious seeds of then.
Our human brain can travel far:
Back and forth and home again.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Our Brain May Be a Record of the Future
I have been reading Dr. Joe Dispenza’s first book, Evolve Your Brain, The Science of Changing Your Mind, with great enthusiasm since Rosemary’s encounter with him two weeks ago. And my blog themes, apart from Rosemary’s posts that I share here, have been revolving around this whole notion of Change Your Mind to Change Your Life!
I have also been writing about creating your future, and bringing it into the present, a bit of a twist on the whole Secret/Manifestation/Law of Attraction theme. Recall that I wrote earlier in the year that my “visitors from the future” spoke of time and the importance of pulling future strength, character, structure into the now in order to create the future. And I wrote how time seems to behave like an echo-chamber so we need to have a vision of the future in order to manifest what we are looking for in life, even now!
Then I came across this from Dispenza as he writes about the incredible amount of unused brain capacity we humans have: “Do these latent neural nets represent undiscovered regions of human potential? Could selection turn on these latent areas? Might these neural areas be activated, developed, and refined, given the proper knowledge and instruction? Could we occupy or activate these areas so that we can reach a new, greater level of mind? If so, we could be looking at our evolutionary future, and our brain may be a record of that future, not just the past.”
I love this notion that our brains may be a record of the future! It is exactly in line with the notion of time being circular and always present right now. The future is now! And it is recorded in our brains, in those latent neural networks just resting there ready to be turned on!
This concept comes with incredible responsibility and power. Both Rosemary and I have been writing how we have to be very careful with our thoughts! Thoughts become things, right? And thoughts become the future for us! Every new thought we have fires up a new set of neuron connections; a new neural network is established. And if one such thought extends into some latent region to kick off a whole cascade of network connections then we may be recreating ourselves for the future!
The more I look at this, read about it and think about it we are future creatures in the making. We no longer have to wait for the Darwinian evolutionary process of ponderous natural selection to create the New Human. We are constantly becoming the New Human as we generate new thoughts and those thoughts get laid down as new network pathways through the uncharted territories of our latent mass of neurons!
Humans seem to have evolved much faster than most species. This has been a criticism of evolutionary theory and feeds the notion of “divine creationism.” But what if our extra brain capacity was the latest evolutionary driver that sped the selection process beyond the pre-consciousness rate? And once consciousness is achieved it seems there is a built-in reinforcing feedback loop to further accelerate the process. For example our tool making leveraged our survival odds. Better tools increased the survival rate and set up new neural pathways which expanded our brain capacity. Our consciousness, capacity for memory, language, dexterity, all fed this loop to continue to extend our neural nets beyond any creature before us.
And we are still evolving. New thoughts, concepts, theories, discoveries, explorations, all take us into the future. Even bad ideas may open up new connections that may trigger something good. And what about art, music, songs, poetry, stories? Might these also be keys to unlock these “undiscovered regions” that Dispenza addresses?
Much has been written about our huge brain capacity and potential compared to what we use. What if we could put even a small portion of it to good use in our lives? What if we found the key to unlock this treasure? Could it be the door to our “evolutionary future”?
I’m planning to continue this exploration, find the key, change my mind and create my future! How about you?
Is Your Life Reflecting Your Values? — Richard’s Commentary
Rosemary always asks these pointed and difficult questions! Yes, I know they are good for me to reflect on, to answer, truthfully, for myself. And I actually thought this one would be reasonably easy for me to reply to and write this commentary. Then I took a second look!
A couple of years ago I did an exercise to clarify my values, to align them with my thinking, my philosophy. I made a list and prioritized it. I took a deep dive into this analysis, writing at length about these values I had come up with, what they mean to me and how I live by them. At the end of much thought I distilled the set of values down to two key ones: Practice and Love. In fact I even drew a diagram, a schematic to relate these two primal values: Practice –> Love.
No, this doesn’t mean my practices lead to love and it doesn’t mean if I practice well enough I will learn love. Maybe these meanings are overlays here, but these are two distinct values for me. I truly value that I am able to practice my various approaches to live a conscious life. Meditation, yoga, qigong, pages, poetry, … and any other consciousness raising practice that comes along that has potential for me is a key value. And how much more can I say about Love? Self, family, friends, community, humanity, life, Planet Earth, Nature, food, wine, beer making, wow…so much to love in life! And, clearly there is a relationship between practice and love. I love my practices. My practices help me better understand this whole sense of Love. Love improves my practices. It is complex and I can’t say that I even fully understand it when I write, and I often do: Practice –> Love.
But Rosemary’s question goes deeper here. Yes, she asks us to review our values, but more importantly to review our lives as they reflect those values we reaffirm! This is the key analysis, the driving question.
And I’ve spent the last several days, as part of our retreat weekend, reviewing and refining my answer. My answer initially is “no.” Oh sure, I’m doing a lot of practice, and I’m pleased with this. I also love: I am partnered with the love of my life. I am part of a loving family. My kids really do love me (at least they’ve done an awesome job of showing it!). But there’s a deeper level here I am reaching toward.
My exploration begins with the word “unconditional.” This is the quality of Love I’m reaching to attain. And this would then truly be the goal of Practice –> Love, my core values. I am not practicing unconditional love at every opportunity and therefore, my life is not reflecting this value.
That said I am working on it. This is my new level of Practice I’m striving to achieve. I suspect it is a life-long pursuit! But I have begun. Last evening, after Rosemary and I had returned from our retreat, our daughter stated, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that she had been craving pancakes for breakfast and would I please get up to make her some next morning! Hmmm, on Wednesdays she leaves for work at 7:15; hey, I’m retired, and while I am working harder than ever before and enjoying it a whole lot more, my hours don’t include 7:15 am! I did not commit! But this morning I was awake at 6:30, wanting more sleep. I debated with myself for about 30 seconds, and then asked “what would I do if I held the value of unconditional love? Yeah, you guessed it; I got up and fixed daughter and two grandsons pancakes (two different kinds). And the surprise and smiles were well worth the few extra winks!
With this good experience as a launch point I have been challenging myself to come from unconditional love all day. I’ve failed multiple times! I had several errands to run which meant driving and encountering other drivers; always a stumbling block for me to keep my cool while driving, but at least I continued to pull myself back to my core value. I’m practicing!
How are you practicing your values this year?
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Is Your Life Reflecting Your Values?
We’re getting down to the nitty gritty here and I hope you’ll seriously consider what’s in this article. How do you decide which activities will receive your attention today? What values are you using to allocate your precious hours today, the hours that you will never be able to recapture after they have been spent?
This is where living a conscious life meets living the hectic 21st Century busyness that seduces us all into thinking that things have to be the way they are.
You have 24 hours in each day. Your human body requires 7-9 hours of sleep – good, peaceful, restful, restorative sleep. The rest of your hours are yours to spend as you choose.
‘Wait!’ you say. ‘I have to go to work, get the kids off to school, teach my class, meet with my clients, go to the grocery store, and ______________ [fill in the blank]! I don’t have control over those hours!’
To which I answer, ‘Yes. You do.’
Every moment of every day we are at choice as to how we will spend that moment. You choose to work at that particular job. The kids might be able to get themselves off to school or a nanny could do it. You scheduled your class or your clients. Groceries can be delivered or a personal assistant or a spouse can do the shopping. And so the choices go. You might think that you can’t afford things but you can afford certain things because you choose them.
I’m not being simplistic here. We all make choices and ‘I can’t afford it’ really translates to ‘I choose to spend my money elsewhere’ or, even, ‘I CHOSE to spend my money elsewhere and now I have to pay the bills.’ Still, it is all based on choice.
So knowing that you choose how to spend your time, how can you make sure that you are choosing according to your values?
First, you must know what your values are and you must know them in priority order. I frequently see a client who feels conflicted and the answer to clarity lies in examining the values that are bumping into each other. Here are two questions to ask yourself:
Who do I really want to spend time with today?
AND What is the most fulfilling activity that I can put on my calendar today?
If the answers match the schedule, good for you! And if not, then ask yourself, Why not?
You have the power to make choices about how you spend the precious hours you have each day. Are you LIVING your life or are you SPENDING your life?
Choose to schedule your day based on what is important to you, what really matters. Don’t let anyone else control your schedule. If your boss wants you to be in a meeting at a certain time, then, by all means, attend the meeting. But instead of spending emotional capital resenting it, accept that you choose to remain in this job [even if it feels as if you have no choice to remain in this job. You could choose to quit and maybe live on the street so you might be making the right choice for the moment!] If your family is making a demand on your time that causes you to resent saying ‘yes’ then say ‘no.’ And release feeling guilty about it!
Notice how often you make choices that don’t feel right to you. Making the choice to take an injured kid to the ER feels right, doesn’t it? Making the choice to escape into TV when there might be something else you could do might be escaping your life instead of living it. AND watching TV might be your active choice to relax and rest your mind for a bit, so release the feeling of guilt about making that choice!
CHOOSE. Match your schedule to your values. Raise your consciousness about your moments and you’ll feel happier!
INSPIRATION FROM ROSEMARY: What Are Your Values for 2013?
Here’s Rosemary’s video for the week: What Are Your Values for 2013?
Monday’s Poem: Retreat Time (Renewal)
Rosemary and I are away for a long weekend retreat. We are assessing values, making plans, adjusting and transforming. In anticipation of this activity I wrote this:
Retreat Time
(Renewal)
Deep Winter, cold:
Withdraw, pull in,
Retain, restrain;
Inside is warm.
Quiet time, ease:
Relax, go in,
Let go, let god;
Practice presence.
Retreat time, now:
Visions flow in,
Hear, smell, taste, touch.
New Mind, new you!
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Mind over Matter
Rosemary attended a LiveStream event with Joe Dispenza last week. She was very impressed and is now committed to Breaking The Habit of Being Herself: How to Lose Her Mind and Create a New One to paraphrase the title of his latest book. This is something right up her alley if you have been following The Scientific Mystic for any length of time. She loves the new brain science that is emerging and meshing so excitingly with quantum science. Of course she has been evolving her brain for as long as I have known her! We are both explorers and open to the unfolding wonderment of discoveries and advancements on our paths together.
In her excitement about Dr. Dispenza’s presentation her natural response is to order books! Yes, we already have both of them (we are unrepentant collectors of books!). And as is my response I immediately absconded with his first book: Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind (she already got this material through the webinar, right?). And now I’m plowing right through it; I do have to keep pace with Rosemary to be sure I still love this new person she is becoming! Oh, and while I’m at it I had better “create a new mind” for myself so that there’s a better chance she’ll love me back!
Seriously this is all good stuff and right in line with what Rosemary has been writing about and what I’ve been responding to after crossing the threshold of 2012 and into the new territory of the Transformation of 2013. For some of you Dispenza may not offer a lot of new material in his books, but it is presented in a very accessible way and backed up with wonderful stories.
The essence of this work is, in fact, Mind over Matter (Mom) – and yes, my Mom did say this to me a lot. In yesterday’s post I quoted Mike Dooley: “Thought becomes things” and other authors, including Rosemary: “Thoughts are things.” We certainly can all agree that thoughts are energy, and Einstein clearly knew energy and matter are tightly bound. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful energy sources. And just as energy is preserved, never lost, so too our thoughts have lasting effect, both on ourselves and others who may be the recipients of our projected thoughts!
Rosemary’s admonitions, “be careful what you think” and “think new thoughts for 2013” are certainly worth attention. And this attention comes from the meta-mind I wrote about in yesterday’s post. Go meta; monitor your thoughts; just practice this awareness as a first step. There is no judgment required here, only assessment, conscious observance of the thoughts that run through your mind and conscious recall that these thoughts are energy and become things!
When we get a firm grasp on the characteristics of our thoughts and this practiced ability to monitor them with our meta-mind, we can then begin to consider their value, whether they are supporting the life we want to live, whether they are helping us, if they are helping others, and, in general, if they tend to be positive or negative (here I might rather say “yin or yang” to keep the judgment out of the evaluation.)
And when we have a good grasp on our thoughts we can then begin to make choices on how we want to think. And this is where MoM (Mind over Matter) comes in. Our higher intelligence as humans gives us the freedom of choice. And through the highest form of that intelligence, our higher or meta-mind, we can sift through all the possible choices open to us and decide consciously which thoughts manifest the life we want for ourselves. And this is not to deny obstacles, other matter (even other people’s thoughts!) out in our pathway, that may disrupt our journey. These are lessons; they are opportunities to refine the choices, or even change them if necessary to learn what we are here to learn. And this is when mind over matter becomes most powerful. Not only are we free to choose, we are free to continue in that choice, despite all odds and obstacles, or we are free to re-choose and refine the very vector of our life-story!
Rosemary and I are constantly refining our stories. It’s an exciting trip! And we know we can always trust that our minds are powerful enough to overcome all matter.
And so is yours!
Thanks, MoM!
“Think New Thoughts for 2013” – Richard’s Commentary
“Thoughts become things” according to Mike Dooley. They are things according to many current authors linking quantum fields and our brains (or should I say “minds”?). Our thoughts are certainly energy that is detectable, measurable and effective! The so called “new age” construct that we create our own reality through how we think and act, imagine and project our thoughts, ideas, visions into the world is becoming main stream science for those who are open and willing to explore these not-necessarily-self-evident concepts.
Then whether we believe this approach or not would seem not to matter; it’s not a matter of faith but a matter of science. We don’t believe in gravity; it’s a fact that objects near the earth respond to a force by falling to the earth. “Thoughts are things” is not a belief system but as real as gravity. There’s a lot of empirical evidence to back this up.
Therefore we really do have to be very aware of our thoughts, to monitor them, to assess and characterize them and to channel them in the direction we choose if we want to live a certain way. And this is particularly true if we want to change, improve the way we are living – evolve!
The way I look at this we need to be of “two minds.” We need our “active mind” to get us through the day. Part of this mind keeps us alive, running our physical bodies and responding to external stimulations as they pop up. And part of this mind is making decisions on a myriad of inputs; some decisions are almost automatic, based on habits and some are actual choices we are motivated to make based on priorities and plans. Then there is the second mind, the observer mind that assesses our life from another level. This could be called the “meta-mind” because it operates at the meta-level lifting out of the routine operations to passively monitor how we are doing. This could also be called the “mindful mind.”
Another common expression these days is “change your mind and change your life.” This could be the corollary to “thoughts become things.” These are easily expressed phrases, quickly becoming platitudes. But underlying their seemingly obvious simplicity things get a bit dicey. How many of you are sticking to your resolutions for 2013? That mind that runs on autopilot and habit consumes a huge percentage of our waking mental activity. It is not until we begin to assess how we are spending this “mind time” that we realize how much thought-energy is wasted. Don’t feel bad if you are already falling short on those resolutions. The routines you were living through in 2012, while not “hard-wired” into your brain, are a set of well worn pathways through neural networks laid down years ago. They are difficult to rewire!
The endless loops that play and replay in our minds are wasted energy. The knee-jerk emotional energy we expend on all the little, and sometimes big, annoyances in our lives is pretty much wasted – this emotional energy seldom accomplishes anything!
This is where the second, meta-mind comes in. We cannot change our minds, change our habits, change our responses unless we monitor, assess and evaluate the rightness and usefulness of those responses in the first place, when they occur.
A perfect example happened to me today. I was practicing qigong. My meta-mind should have been in high-gear, right? I was present, mindful, deeply into the practice. There were some people in the neighbor’s backyard talking and I could ignore them. Then our Lhasa Apso, Tara, came on the scene. At first she was attentive but quiet. Then as she detected the outside disturbance she let out a piercing bark. I almost jumped out of my skin! Then I scolded her for disrupting my practice. It took me several moments to re-collect myself and get back in my rhythm. Later as I was reviewing this I realized my reaction was not only out of habit but also unfair. Tara’s breed is from Tibet where Lhasas were raised as temple watchdogs. Their job was to alert meditating monks and masters if there was an intrusion into the monastery! Well, Tara was doing exactly what she was bred and raised to do! And she doesn’t have a meta-mind (at least as far as I can tell) so I had no right or reason to scold her! I’m the one with the meta-mind but it didn’t wake up until after my unfairness.
Exercising this meta-mind is no easy thing. This is why it is called “practice.” And it is through this practice that we can begin to “think new thoughts.”
How’s your 2013 practice coming along?
Men and The Goddess 