In order to be able to love purely and steadily we need to understand how our reality is created A major obstacle to pure and steady love is our confusion about who is responsible for what happens to us and how we feel about it. This confusion is caused by two mistaken perceptions:

1. That others cause our reality. When we believe this, we feel pain, bitterness, anger and hate when we do not have what we want and need.

2. That we are the cause or creators of others’ realities. This leads to feelings of guilt, shame, fear, bitterness, self-rejection, anger and hate, when others do not cooperate with us to as to create the positive reality we believe they must have in order for us to be successful and worthy as the “creators of their reality.”

Such beliefs lead to co-dependent relationships that are much more susceptible to disappointment, bitterness, guilt, pain and of course conflict. Love requires that we take total responsibility for our reality and allow others to take responsibility for theirs.

Love relationships naturally thrive on caring for each other and helping each other as much as possible. It natural that we will ask for help and will loving offer help the others. But we cannot create their reality and they cannot create ours. Much love is lost when we blame others for the reality we ourselves are creating as well as when we blame ourselves for the reality they are creating for themselves.

How then do we create our personality reality?

The ability to love requires that we arrive at an even higher level of perception were we can understand that there are universal laws governing all that occurs in this universe. Scientists understand this in relationship to the physical and energy realms. Few however have totally understood this in terms of consciousness, mind, spirit, human will and fate.

All religions embrace the concept that spiritual laws govern all events in the universe according to a hidden wisdom and justice that is often difficult for us to understand. Spiritual philosophies teach us that all of creation is designed to facilitate the evolution of the soul, and that all that happens to each of us is exactly the stimulus we need in order to move forward in that evolutionary process.

Another spiritual precept is that each soul – personality is the sole creator of its personal subjective reality and that no other can create or be responsible for our reality. And in turn we cannot be responsible for or create others’ realities.

Here are some factors that intertwine so as to create the matrix of our subjective personal reality.

Creating Reality Through Interpretation and Projection

1. We create our subjective reality by the way in which we interpret behaviors, situations and events. Unfortunately we often do not perceive what is there, but actually what we have been programmed to believe is there. It has been shown in scientific experiments that we have difficulty seeing what we do not believe. Our belief system works as a filter that subjectively and selectively interprets whatever is perceived in ways that corroborate what we already believe and ignores what we do not.

For example is we believe that others will reject us and do not love us, we will interpret their actions as a form of rejection and lack of love for us even when that is not the reality. We have all been surprised by people who have misinterpreted our actions and believed that we had motives and feelings that we never had.

We do the same. We project onto persons and situations motives and dangers that simply are not there. When we do so, we experience fear, pain, bitterness, creating unnecessary unhappiness for ourselves and others.

We, however, may find that we have differing and often conflicting beliefs creating a confused reality. It may be useful here to discuss the various forms of belief systems. I would like to hypothesize some different categories of beliefs.

a. Emotionally Charged Impressions – These are not so much beliefs as “impressions”, which are imprinted on the mind during traumatic experiences. The mind then identifies this particular stimulus with this emotionally charged feeling, and when we think of it, we feel fear and other emotions. We do not go through thinking processes here such as analyzing, evaluating and coming to conclusions. This kind of “belief” has a strong “emotional charge” but no actual inertia or mass, because it is not based on observations and facts, but rather on one or two intense experiences – which of course – are not representative of reality.

b. Mistaken Childhood Conclusions – These are usually mistaken beliefs about a reality in which we perceive ourselves as weak, wrong, unlovable and to blame for just about everything that happens around us such as our parents anger, absence, unhappiness, indifference, divorce, illness, death etc. We falsely interpret that we are unworthy or unable and that others will always behave towards us in ways that we experienced in childhood.

These first two categories are usually repressed in the subconscious mind (shadow, inner child – whatever you prefer) because of the pain and confusion they produce. We suppress them so that we can focus and function in our daily lives. They are encased in an “energy membrane” much as our body envelopes a sliver or cut in our skin in order to prevent it from poisoning the rest of the body.

Although these “beliefs” are repressed so that we do not feel the unpleasant negative emotional-energy charge associated with them, they are activated whenever we come into contact with or think of the specific stimulus. They generate fear, emotional withdrawal and often aggressive behavior. They also create psychosomatic illnesses. They control our reactions to events, situations and persons.

Because of their repression and subsequent isolation from our conscious mind, these first two belief systems do not evolve as we do. They remain in their original state regardless of our evolving logic, reasoning, new experiences and spiritual faith. Unless we engage in inner psychological or spiritual work, they receive no new data.

The third category of beliefs is our:

c. Evolving Conscious Belief System:

This is our conscious belief system which, as it processes new data, reevaluates its perceptions of reality seeking to make the adjustments necessary in order to understand the truths behind the phenomena we observe.

This is actually evolving in only some people. Many have stopped processing new data and thus have remained with the same conscious belief system for many years and will leave their bodies with it.

This belief system understands that we are safe, secure, good, worthy and capable. It also realizes that we are not in danger from people, heights, cars, insects, dogs, cats, elevators, airplanes etc.

The facts available to it cause it to realize that its fears are unfounded. It realizes that our self-worth has nothing to do with what others say, think or do.

Yet we continue to experience fear and its resulting emotions due to our previous two categories of beliefs, (Emotionally Charged Impressions and Mistaken Childhood Conclusions) which are isolated from and usually stronger than our Evolving Conscious Belief System.

b. Our Spiritual Intuitive Faith constructs our fourth category of beliefs. These beliefs are usually based on faith rather than proof. We feel that what we believe is true. In addition to being affected by others’ spiritual beliefs, we also experience inner awakenings or revelations in which we just “know” that something is true.

The last two conscious categories of beliefs are usually weak when confronted with specific stimuli, which awaken our first two repressed categories. We may have total faith in our immortality or in divine wisdom and justice, but when confronted with stimuli that awaken our Emotionally Charged Impressions and Mistaken Childhood Conclusions, the power of these later two often temporarily overshadow our faith and logic.

We have simultaneous multiple beliefs, which are working at different levels creating conflicting emotions and reactions to events and situations. We can simultaneously feel love, peace, hurt and anger because our various beliefs are creating different internal realities.

To be continued.

(From the forthcoming book LOVE IS A CHOICE, by Robert Elias Najemy)

Visualization will help you to discover more energy and joy as you tune in to your inner self. It will also help you gain the competitive edge in your personal and professional relationships. Visualization, or ‘mental imaging,’ is a powerful skill that can be practiced regularly to improve your communication.

It is a process of relaxation in which you can consciously evoke desired sensations and images. It is as if you are watching yourself and your surroundings on an inner screen. When you allow yourself to visualize, you are giving signals to your body to either increase or decrease sensation. You are in control of your sensations of feeling, hearing, smelling, seeing, color and temperature. Therefore, when you visualize, you control your feelings and thoughts. It is important to communicate positive signals, feelings, or ideas to maximize pleasant thoughts and situations, and eliminate unpleasant thoughts or situations.

To practice visualization, first choose a place that is relatively quiet, and where you can be alone for fifteen to thirty-minutes. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Breathe deeply and calm your body. For practice, imagine yourself sitting on the beach watching the sunset over the ocean . . . listen to the sound of the wind and waves.. . feel the sun as it touches your face . . . see the blue sky, touch the rocks and sand, and focus on anything else that is pleasing to you. Upon completion open your eyes, relax, and get ready for the next segment.

Next, close your eyes and try to create as real an image of the actual situation that you want to change. Focus on what is in the background and the foreground of your surroundings. Now choose a behavior (habit), or a skill, that is important to you. Make sure that it’s one that you want to modify or change. It may be a new skill that you want to improve upon such as public speaking. When you have the particular situation in mind, visualize your movements and begin to slow yourself down (breathing deeply). See (in your mind) yourself speaking in front of a group. Listen to what you are saying. Observe your nonverbal gestures. Visualize this segment as if it were in slow motion. Pay attention to your own movements and sounds.

Next, begin to change and correct your verbal and nonverbal behaviors that may be frustrating your communication and performance. Replace your unproductive actions with ones that are more appropriate to improving your skills and increasing your performance. With your eyes still closed, allow yourself to review the situation again, only this time in the normal speed and in the new way. Remember, pay close attention to your verbal and nonverbal communication. You should be filling yourself with feelings of confidence. Imagine the audience applauding.

When you have finished open your eyes. It may be important for you to write down certain parts of your experience. This form of guided imagery can be implemented on a regular basis. Practicing fifteen minutes a day and increasing your time, incrementally, to thirty minutes is recommended.

Here’s another simple, unjustly discarded but effective tip for success – keep doing something new every day!

Notice that I said “keep doing something new every day”, instead of just “keep doing something every day”.

It doesn’t matter at first if you think you’re doing things which do not seem to move you forward in achieving your goals.

If you keep doing something new which you’d never done before or had not done yesterday, you are sure to stumble upon a breakthrough that is going to propel you towards your success faster than you had ever anticipated.

When you do this, that is, when you keep doing something new every day in your attempts to hit your target, you are copying nature, you are actually putting the law of genetic natural selection to practical use in your life.

Now I won’t go into the details of natural selection, let the geneticists and the expert biologists handle that, but the basic concept you can learn from the law of natural selection is that even the tiniest changes in the genetic make-up of a species from generation to generation will eventually yield the grandest and most profound results.

There’s an old saying that goes, “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”.

This is true, unless, you keep on doing something new every day in your endeavour to achieve your goals. It can be something slightly new or something radically different from what you had been initially doing.

Become a scientist. Every day, take note of what you did and the results you have actually attained. Collect all the tips and advice you have acquired to attain success in your chosen field and list them all down in the simplest of terms on a piece of paper as some form of a checklist.

Let’s label these tips and advice collectively as tactics. Pick one tactic or find a way to bunch a few tactics together to form one super-tactic and commit yourself to test out that tactic every day.

Observe your success with that tactic or super-tactic and log it in.

Over a course of time, review your success log and see which of the tactics seemed to have yielded the best results for you. Marry the most successful tactics together and see how you can create your very own step-by-step action plan.

Take a fresh piece of paper and forge your solid action plan for success and commit yourself to it. Define precisely what you need to do each and every day, the routine tasks that must be done to ensure progress towards achieving your goals. Break up your goal or goals into bite-sized easily attainable targets that you must meet every day.

Now as you commit yourself to this new action plan for success of yours, do not entirely abandon the principle of observing and logging your daily successes and failures (feedback) and continue to do so, modifying and adapting and evolving your action plan as you go along.

In time, you will forge out a clear path to success for yourself. This path belongs entirely to you and you alone. It is a unique algorithm that only you could have created and only you can make a success out of.