Parenting Your Thoughts
All of our experience of life is something which we have made. This is not reprehensible. Rather, it is honored by Spirit because of who and what its maker is. What man has made, God does not put asunder, except through that which shares the Mind of God, which is our true Self. If our experience in the world is not to our liking, it is because we made it without awareness and knowledge, which means it was made while we were not in our right mind.
We would help you to recognize your right mind, so that you can experience making that which is in harmony with your right mind. The right mind is the only source of deep, lasting happiness. That is the purpose of the world, to learn to do this. It involves being able to experience who we really are, at will, and to use that experience in a manner that reflects the reality of its maker.
Develop a Relationship with Your Thoughts
All day, all night we have thoughts running through our head, directing how we feel and what we do. Essentially, whether we are aware of them or not, they take control and determine how we perceive everything. For many of us, they are like four year olds, assessing, discovering, conversing about, and establishing our control over our immediate world. For some of us, they are like precocious children, very advanced in their ability to surmise from physically perceptible circumstances combined with a lifetime of conscious and unconscious memories. But, they are still four year olds as long as the parent is not controlling them. They are under the direction of ego, which one might describe as that which attempts to shape control out of chaos.
What are we calling thoughts? A sample list:
- Pain: Physical Pain, Mental Pain
- Perceptions: Touch, Taste, Sight, Hearing, Smell, "Sensing"
- Calculated Judgments: Assessments, "What if's", judgments of consequences of actions
- Feelings: Fear, anxiety, stressful reactions, need
- Beliefs: Social, Religious, Medical, Political, etc.
Basically, there is nothing in your awareness that is NOT a thought. All that you think you know about the world is just a thought in your brain.
Who and What is the Parent of Our Thoughts?
There is within each of us a "mind" that uses our thoughts to fulfill its purpose for our life. It is the Parent of our thoughts. It is a wise, loving parent, and can not intercede until we give it permission to do so. But who is it that is giving permission and how is that permission given?
There comes a point in the life of everyone, when our thoughts have tangled themselves up too hopelessly. Either catastrophy follows or a settling occurs. That settling, which some call "letting go", allows the Parent to step in and hug our thought creations, and extend the love that it is to lubricate the entire mechanism of thinking. The thoughts are no longer in unmonitored control. Rather, it is the Parent who lovingly guides the thoughts. The Parent intuitively knows the bigger picture of our life. We can call this a "Meta" spiritual awareness, and we can train our mind to not only allow the Parent in, but to come to identify ourselves as that Parent in our daily experience. We call this Parent the Highest Expression of Oneself. The Voice with which IT hears is the Holy Spirit, or the Voice for Love.
How Do We Switch Control to the Parent?
The first step in listening for the Voice for Love within focuses on the practice of being that loving parent to your thoughts. It is a conscious practice, and like any exercise intended to replace old thought habits, it needs to be consciously practiced for quite a while until it becomes automatic.
The practice involves extending a flavor of Love (the Love that you are as an extension of God's Love) to each thought that arises in your mind.The only type of control that such a loving parent exerts is one of love, not coersion, and not pushing away of thoughts. It's attraction is irresistable once experienced. Listen here for an excerpt of a Five Step Workshop, which prepares us for this first step.
We invite you to join us in a workshop, and learn all the steps involved in recognizing the Voice for Love within. In the meantime, remember to develop your relationship with your thoughts.
Hug a tree if you wish, but you'll be surprised at how helpful it is to hug your thoughts first!