The Power of Thought

Many people seeking spiritual growth or personal development have a basic desire for freedom. This desire often serves as a driving need for change. Inner freedom allows us to pursue our dreams and goals without interference or limit. The constraints in our mind keep us where we are in life, and prevent us from creating or allowing external change. This is really the only limit we really need lifted in order to achieve personal success and happiness.

We all define freedom in different ways. Although we may feel that having financial abundance would provide real freedom, we’ve all seen examples of wealthy people trapped by their own addictions, fears, or negative thinking. We can probably agree that while they have achieved financial independence, they do not have inner peace and true freedom. So freedom is an inner state of mind, as well as an external condition.

Negative and fearful thinking puts in place boundaries that imprison us. For an extreme example to prove a point, imagine that you had all the money in the world. And obviously, with a huge bank account, you could do whatever you desired, including travel to beautiful and exotic places. But what if you feared travel? Imagine being terrified to leave your home. Agoraphobics face that fear daily. An unfree mind imposes numerous conditions and limits.

Any unhappy circumstances you find yourself in results from your thinking. If you have any fears or self-doubt, they hold you back from the life you want. For example, if you fear intimacy and love, you will not find true joy in a loving relationship. You will likely choose the path or person that doesn’t challenge your fear. If you fear for your personal safety, you will not want to travel or go out comfortably into the world and enjoy the activities that you might otherwise desire. If you have fears about your own competence and value, you will not move into the career that you want, be with the mate that you want, and not feel valuable enough to get what you deserve. You will hesitate to move toward goals out of fear of failure. While anger is truly a self-defeating emotion to hold onto, fear is by far, the reason most people live out their lives in a dissatisfying way.

Fears not only hold us back from our heart’s desires, but they have the power to attract negative conditions that validate the belief systems that cause those fears. If you fear intimacy out of a belief that you will be hurt by infidelity, you may draw that very situation to you. If you believe that the world is an unsafe place, you may manifest conditions that validate that thought. We can’t predict the outcome to the negative thoughts that we harbor. Our lives are designed in such a way that we are often given just what we can handle, and no more, that will push us through restrictions and free us to love more, be more, and live more.

Understand that most of your fears are not valid. They do not keep you safe, they only hold you back. We know perfectly well when a fear is reasonable, and when it is not. Begin now to "feel the fear and do it anyway." With intelligent discernment, make choices that are not dictated by your fears. If you want something, move towards it, and don’t listen to the negative internal voices. As you consciously work to overcome these fears, you will eliminate them.  Ignore them, and they will persist.

As the repressed unconscious thoughts heal, we come to enjoy a new state of being without the anxiety, fear, anger and negativity that once ruled our choices and actions. This is an attainable goal, and ultimately what you will find on your journey of growth.

We need to achieve on an inner level first what we hope to find in the outer world. So while we work on manifesting the outer condition of financial freedom, and other abundant conditions, we need to free ourselves of every condition which detracts from our internal sense of freedom. This only requires a willingness on our part to release negative thoughts of self-criticism and undervalued self-worth, as well as those judgmental beliefs that we often feel self-righteous about.

While you feel that your belief systems are infallible and universal truths, they are only judgments that you have come to accept as truth. They may be judgments about what people are, what marriage is, what life is, what government is, how fair the judicial system, who you are, and so forth. Many of your beliefs are counterproductive to creating the desirable conditions that you want. You need to begin to eliminate all those beliefs to which you have attached some negative judgment, regardless of what you perceive as truth. Persisting in negative beliefs will only create undesirable conditions that validate those beliefs. If you want to shape a new and different reality, you need to believe in a different reality. Sometimes we feel that we are willing to believe a different truth if we see or experience it, but it’s almost always true that we first need to believe it before we will see it. The principles of law of attraction tell us that is precisely what we must do.

Remember that thoughts within the mind have a magnetic pull that attracts like objects or situations in the external world. The Creative Mind offers no room for rationalizations, excuses or disclaimers. In the infinite and diverse universe that we live in, there is no universal truth for all people. Each and every individual has an entirely different reality.

Know that joy, freedom and love is out there and available to all, not only a select few. Believe that it is your right and destiny, and commit to achieving it.