Over and over and over again, we must master the knowledge, by becoming the knowledge.
You cannot create a new personal reality as the same/old personality. Your personality is comprised of the preponderance of how you think, feel, and act. To become someone new, you must think, feel, and act “newly” - even if, aside from, and especially when you are triggered by the same stimulus that used to “make you” angry, anxious, depressed, etc.
To truly change, to truly embody new circumstances, you need to die to who you were, even if who you were is a justified reaction to what has happened, or is happening.
We are talking about the biological, chemical, and even epigenetic death of your old self. Even if you buy the best wings money can buy and paste them on a caterpillar, it will not fly. It must go into the chrysalis and dissolve before emerging into a world of wild colors and unimaginable heights.
The charnel grounds your old self goes to die in is the holy ground of the present moment, where the past can’t enter unless beckoned, and the future does not yet exist. In the present moment, which is actually NEW, we must think, feel, and act in NEW ways that are greater than the ways we are compelled to re-act like we “always have” because “it’s just the way I am.”
(Because this is an article about doing the work, more than mental masturbation about the work, I will add that it is required, for all things beneficial, to cultivate Presence. Therefore, we mush prioritize the practice of extra and open attention: this is my 30-minute explanation of the practice and this is a playlist of 10, 10-minute guided meditations.)
Back to the topic of dying, there are aspects of yourself that need to be left behind and never resurrected again. What if you no longer give life to the zombies that you think are haunting you? Maybe you are haunting them and they’d rather rest in peace? A little compassion for the dead, people! Leave those old selves of yours alone! (or for a couple hundred bucks an hour, go talk to a therapist about them)
In the empty space where you no longer do what you did, you can instead rehearse the future you value and choose - you can think, feel, and act newly according to what you value and choose. When you build enough momentum with this practice in the present moment, actively dis-regarding (not denying) the past and simultaneously evoking the future, then you will discover yourself sooner or later living in the fruits of your active imagination.
Understanding → thinking → feeling → acting → becoming → BE-ing →
If you change, life changes.
That problem, maybe even that disease, lives in that old person. And when your old, familiar self dies because you no longer breathe life into it (it lives off your attention), the old problems and potentially even diseases die - just as well.
You don’t need to fix, solve, or get rid of your problems. Trying to do so is akin to zombie-smelling salts, per the principle of “sprouting and pruning.”
It works better to create solutions than it does to fix problems. We don’t need to heal in order to thrive, we need to thrive in order to heal.
In our Joyful Excellence Mastermind (JEM), you will find connection and camaraderie in a community of people mastering the art of living life well, from the practical to the profound. If you would like to learn more about that, send me a message.
