You may find you have to struggle in order to be more conscious. Despite wonderful benefits close at hand, you will nevertheless find yourself fighting what seems at times a tedious, uphill battle. Why? Old tendencies are very powerful. Your habits will almost always win. It’s not a question of sincerity, either. Of course you’d like to be a more loving, creative person. Who wouldn’t?
Certainly it would be wonderful to contact your higher consciousness with its thrilling insight and inner power. No question it’s a worthwhile endeavor. No question it’s worth persistence and quantities of attention. Nevertheless, your old tendencies, the way you habitually think and feel — your most regular attitudes about life from yesterday and yesteryear — will not easily yield to a happier you.
Very often we sincerely make commitments to ourselves. We may even tell others about the new person we are striving to be. Yet a few weeks down the road we are all too often the same. Endeavoring to shape a new life, in one way or another, can be gallingly frustrating. We usually fail. The old way of doing things, the old habit patterns, are so familiar and apparently powerful. Too frequently we resign and give in to the idea that while other people may succeed in their transformation projects, we are somehow less qualified as human beings. Others must have tremendous will power, whereas ours must indeed be very puny. Or, then again, were we truly sincere? Maybe we didn’t mean it. Obviously we must not have valued our commitment to our new dreams and goals because we gave up so easily. We failed with such total surrender. It only took a few weeks and here we are, unsuccessful once again. We feel either weak-willed or are convinced that our sincerity is most ingenuine.
Next time, when a good idea comes our way we decide not to be fooled into believing we’re sincere. That’s that. So it goes. We joyously jump into failure.
Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
But the fact is you’re not alone. You’re normal. Most everyone, despite helpful inspiration and a deep sincerity, will fail or give up (“giving up” is a nicer word for failure) before accomplishing vitally important goals. Many people will generally fail.
Then, with failure, the guilt feelings come along. Unhappy with yourself, you often lash out at others, or you refuse to have good will, not only for other people but for yourself as well. The guilt feelings last a long time and regularly tell you you’re not a very good person — you’re not worthy or capable of a better life. Certainly, you feel you’re not worthy of higher consciousness. You develop a secret. Despite the right clothes or the right words, you know down deep you’re inferior to other people. You know your failures. You know your limitations. Other people don’t know. They can’t see how badly you’ve fallen short of your dearest hopes. They don’t know, or do they?
“Is my inadequacy visible?” you wonder.
When you know you’re an inferior person, what’s the point of trying? So, when you’ve failed several times you do the obvious: find fitting compromises, find a niche for your inadequate self and muddle along as best you can. Of course it’s helpful to be quite critical of other people so you can be mindful of their inferiorities as well as your own aching ego. Compromise is the rule of the day and, after all, isn’t that what everybody does? Isn’t everyone, in fact, something of a joke? A blunderer? Yes, why does anyone ever try to be more than he or she was yesterday?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is widely stated. Good intentions are pleasant in their own way but how do you, how can you, take good intentions and make them into realities? How can you in truth become more conscious and accomplish, in fact, not in fantasy, what you so powerfully yearn for?
HOW TO SUCCEED
Overcoming Old Habits
It is so important to understand something of the process of success. In whatever area you seek success, you must understand that your tendencies, your habits, will prevail. Most often, old tendencies and habits frustrate and generally smother the new life you are striving to create. Your old tendencies took years of development. Each of us is deeply entrenched in old ways. How can we expect a new rivulet created in three minutes or three days of aspiration to possibly stand against the mighty, deep rivers we have built over ten, fifteen, twenty-five years?
Yet the fact that you are here indicates you have already begun breaking free of old, destructive tendencies. You are searching for a new vision. You are raising your consciousness to new possibilities. You are thinking of higher and alternate ways of doing things. You are contemplating the possibility that higher consciousness does exist and is available to you. You even suspect that higher consciousness is this very minute locked within you, ready to be unleashed. Further, you appreciate that some higher consciousness is already at work throughout your life in order for you to be able to breathe, walk, talk, think, feel. This attitude allows your attention and emotions to overflow the banks of old riverbeds of habits to seek new directions.
Old tendencies will never — repeat, never — be able to stop you if you thoroughly understand the following process. The main thing that must be understood at every step along the way to a more conscious and even superconscious life is this: The seeker of higher consciousness and fulfillment must create new tendencies! Your greater success in life is based on your willingness to not only think about new possibilities but to redirect the flow of your thoughts and feelings, the flow of your life force, into new tendencies and habits of living. New tendencies must be formed, habits and attitudes which will be truly constructive and which at no point will block or inhibit your heartfelt purposes. Almost all failure, especially regarding the achievement of higher consciousness, is caused by our not forming new tendencies.
Keep At It
Somehow people think that merely having a new idea or an enthusiastic, heart-pumping time at some lecture will bring about the new fulfillment or extraordinary capacities. If this were the case, our planet would be instantly out of trouble. The world today is filled with people who get excited about a new idea or way of life almost every month. As soon as they begin to lose their inspiration, and old habits start to sweep them away from the goal once glimpsed so brightly, they move onto something else and proceed through life, jag after jag. Later they look back at their lives and notice they haven’t accomplished much of anything. They notice friends they met along the way, friends who seem to have gained the fruits of success — friends who were more constant in their focus on goals. The jaggers find they themselves have traveled far but arrived nowhere.
To accomplish your fulfillment and know your higher consciousness, vigorous, constant, new tendencies have to be formed. These tendencies will become so strong that no old habits will be able to overcome them. Also, when these new tendencies are consciously and lovingly created, shocks and deceptions of the outer world will not be able to knock you off course or out of stride.
It’s important also to value those constructive tendencies you have already developed. Not all old tendencies are bad. Take time to evaluate which habits of thought, feeling, and action have always been constructive and valuable in your life. Appreciate them anew, give them a chance to grow and expand, becoming more serviceful aids in your life’s new directions. The habits of being kind, or of being able to concentrate easily and well, for example, are extremely helpful tendencies which all too many seekers of higher consciousness have to reestablish or perhaps build from scratch.
Please keep in mind as you progress that many wonderful ideas will come your way. Many partial skills will be revealed to you, too. But none of these significant gifts along your path will be truly yours until you have fully established new tendencies. New habits of thought, feeling, and self-esteem must become an integrated part of you. When you find it particularly easy and natural to behave in the new way that you have chosen, you will succeed. You will succeed for you have formed the tendencies that will get you there.
We ask you to commit two hours a week to selfless service. This service can be anything you choose ranging from helping a family member or neighbor to volunteering at a nonprofit organization.
This commitment is solely between you and your inner self.
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