Exercise 1: Negative Programming To Positive Programming
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Get a large sheet of paper and make a list of all the things your parents said were wrong with you. What were the negative messages you heard? Give yourself enough time to remember as many as you can. A half hour usually works well.
What did they say about money? What did they say about your body? What did they say about love and relationships? What did they say about your creative talents? What were the limiting or negative things they said to you?
If you can, just look objectively at these items and say to yourself, “So that’s where those beliefs came from.” Now let’s get a new sheet of paper and dig a little deeper. What other negative messages did you hear as a Child?
- From relatives?
- From teachers?
- From friends?
- From authority figures?
- From your church?
Write them all down. Take your time. Be aware of what feelings are going on in your body. What you have on these two pieces of paper are the thoughts that need to be removed from your consciousness. These are the beliefs that are making you feel ‘not good enough’."
Now that you have completed this exercise, how do you feel? For the next week, pay attention to when these types of thoughts arise, or you find yourself making limiting statements to or about yourself or others. If you have children, pay special attention to the messages you give them. Think about the origins of these messages. Do they come from within you, or from outside you? Write the affirmation below, from You Can Heal Your Life (1984) in your journal. Repeat it out loud (in the shower if you don’t want others to hear) when you awake in the morning and before you go to bed at night for 1 week:
"In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole and complete. I am always Divinely protected and guided. It is safe for me to look within myself. It is safe for me to look within my past. It is safe for me to enlarge my viewpoint of life. I am far more than my personality—past, present, or future. I now choose to rise above my personality problems to recognize the magnificence of my being. I am totally willing to learn to love myself. All is well in my world."
Here is a powerful story by Jack Canfield in Remember You Are Raising Children, Not Flowers! It's about how the messages of others can also be aligned with truth, and guide us toward awakening. After you read it, think about messages you received that were aligned with pure mind. Write about this in your journal, and remember to take a few moments to give thanks for this guidance.
"I recently heard a story about a famous research scientist who had made several very important medical breakthroughs. He was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter who asked him why he thought he was able to be so much more creative than the average person. What set him so far apart from others?
He responded that, in his opinion, it all came from an experience with his mother which occurred when he was about two years old. He had been trying to remove a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, when he lost his grip on the slippery bottle and it fell, spilling its contents all over the kitchen floor, a veritable sea of milk!
When his mother came into the kitchen, instead of yelling at him, giving him a lecture, or punishing him, she said, "Robert, what a great and wonderful mess you have made! I have rarely seen such a huge puddle of milk. Well, the damage has already been done. Would you like to get down and play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean it up?"
Indeed, he did. After a few minutes his mother said, "You know, Robert, whenever you make a mess like this, eventually you have to clean it up, and restore everything to its proper order. So, how would you like to do that? We could use a sponge, a towel or a mop. What do you prefer?" He chose the sponge and together they cleaned up the spilled milk.
His mother then said, "You know what we have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively carry a big milk bottle with two tiny hands. Let's go out in the back yard and fill the bottle with water and see if you can discover a way to carry it without dropping it." The little boy learned that if he grasped the bottle at the top near the lip with both hands, he could carry it without dropping it. What a wonderful lesson!
This renowned scientist then remarked that it was at that moment that he knew that he didn't need to be afraid to make mistakes. Instead he learned that mistakes were just opportunities for learning something new, which is, after all, what scientific experiments are all about. They are simply that - just experiments to see what happens. Even if the experiment doesn't work, we usually learn something valuable from it."
This mother knew the vital importance of absolute acceptance, and of seeing every occurrence as an opportunity to learn. We can take in the energy and intention of this mother’s act in this moment and integrate it into our being, that is how powerful this original act was. It lives on forever, and helps us all to wake up.
"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice."
—Native American saying