"What is the value of a life, that is wasted, inexperienced by years in this world? Better a moment of full consciousness, because that gives one a start in searching after ones' supreme interest."

These words were spoken 5,000 years ago and they are as true today as they were then. Most people live their lives on "automatic". They repeat the same mental and emotional patterns throughout their lives without questioning the beliefs that often limit them. They consider themselves objectively, and that "things" or experiences just "happen" to them without considering that their own subjective consciousness is actually the source of their own objective and emotional experiences.

As a fellow traveler on the path of life I'd like to share with you several cognitive technologies that can empower you to take control of your mental states and emotions and free you from the misconception that the external environment is controlling your behavior and emotions. The passion and power that gives energy to life comes from a compelling purpose, and if we begin with a powerful paradigm of purposeful living, its possible we'll locate and unlock our own inherent energies that will fuel our personal positive transformations from the inside out.

The activities of human beings can be observed in three phases.
Exploitation, renunciation, and dedication. Exploitation is characterized by selfish interest, and although this can give much passion and power to life, it ultimately self-destructs into reactionary experiences because it is not life-supporting. Renunciation is a type of false equilibrium because no one can remain inactive for long. Progressive movement means elimination and new acceptance, in other words life is a living, moving experience. If you're not living, moving and growing, you'll be stagnating decaying and dying. Only dedication is truly healthy, practical and life-enhancing, because a personal paradigm of dedication utilizes everything in life for the benefit of life and our fellow living beings, and by its selfless nature is non-reactionary. This is a powerful paradigm of purposeful living and draws real goodness and power to energize our lives in a profound and life-supporting way. This is a spiritually purposeful view of life, that energizes and enables a dynamic experience of life.

"By serving the center of all life and beauty, everything is beautifully done".

Our lives take on further power and purpose when we begin to understand that everything in our experience of life proceeds from consciousness. Objective material nature is a product of consciousness and is sustained in consciousness. Everything that exists begins as a thought in consciousness. Consciousness is essentially unlimited in its potentiality, therefore we can state with certainty that the limitations we impose upon our lives are ultimately illusory negative mental constructs that are self-imposed.

The mind is very powerful and can be directed constructively or destructively. By understanding how to resourcefully direct our minds we can empower ourselves to achieve our full potentials in life. Yet, it's not merely enough to simply understand the mind alone, for the mind and body are a unified field. Our experience can also be viewed as a unified diversity of body-mind-and spirit (consciousness). Nurturing all three aspects is life-enhancing and balancing for overall health.

Optimizing the body of course includes diet and exercise. A diet of foods in the modes of goodness, that is, foods such as organic fruits and vegetables, grains, and low-fat milk products keep the body clean and healthy. If those foods are further purified and charged with the conscious intentionality of prayer and spiritual gratitude that recognizes and honors the interconnectedness of all life, they will even purify our body and mind on a deeper level, as well as nourish our spirit.

Meat products involve the systematic abuse and killing of animals. This is action that is characterized by ignorance and exploitation. The fear and violence that the animals experience when their lives are violently terminated remains present in a subtle form within the meat products. When these unhealthy food sources are ingested in the human body they give rise to the imbalances of disease and the subtle negativities that manifest as aggression and unhappiness in human society. Foods of this variety are in the mode of ignorance, for to partake of them is an act of ignore-ance of their unhealthy characteristics. Drugs and alcohol also fall into this category of ignorance. To pollute the body with toxic (poisonous) substances is to in-toxi-cate. You wouldn't pour dirt into your cars gas tank, would you? Why put poison, tar and nicotine, alcohol or other poisons into your bloodstream? The same goes for the subtle mind. A mental diet of violent and explicit television and films also results in negative impressions upon the mind, thus negatively impacting the entire bio-psychological-spiritual system.

The mind and body exist in a cybernetic loop. The condition of the body affects the quality of consciousness and the mental representations of the mind effect the systems and overall health of the body. When one's mind is depressed due to negative internal representations, the body's immunity is adversely affected. Conversely, when the body is properly maintained through a balanced program of diet, exercise and rest, the mind is positively affected by the body's vibrant state of health. By simplifying and cleansing the diet you will take the first and most powerful step in taking charge of your mind and the quality of your life.

The next step in our journey of self-awareness is to understand our mind and emotions. The working senses serve the mind by gathering information from the environment through the pathways of sensory acquisition. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the sense of touch all direct their impulses into the mind. These impulses are then constructed within the mind as visual, auditory, and emotional representations. These representations are not literal experiences of the environment but limited approximations that are perceptually filtered by our beliefs and ideas of what is possible. Their meanings, impact, and emphasis are subjectively applied by we, who are the subjective conscious observers of these internal representations or mental constructs of the world.

We can directly alter the sub modalities of these representations through the application of our intelligence, and thereby enhance or diminish their impact upon our emotions and nervous system. Ultimately this will alter our feelings and subsequent behavioral patterns which in turn directly impact the quality of our lives.

For instance, imagine you are walking down the street and someone bumps into you and insults you for not watching where you're going. If you are feeling unhappy or inattentive to your own emotional state you would most likely react by yelling back at that person. Which in turn would mutually escalate your emotional negativity and lead to a full-scale argument or or even a physical fight. You might go away from the experience with a negative charge that will hang over your whole day. Replaying the negative experience in your mind, over and over again and verbally relating it to everyone you converse with throughout the day, you would continue to re-experience this initial negative emotional experience which would more deeply install it within your conscious experience.

On the other hand, if you're consciously practicing awareness of yourself as part of an internal spiritual practice or simply feeling happy, healthy and content, you may be in a positive and resourceful state that would allow you to respond rather than react. You might immediately feel the negativity of the encounter yet quickly understand that this person is having a "bad day". In other words, this person is representing the world to themselves in a negative way and is therefore acting out of an unremorseful emotional state. What if you suddenly realized that they just walked out of a funeral home where they were attending the funeral of a loved one. Wouldn't that change the way you felt about the experience? And how you felt about their behavior towards you? If you are like most people, you would probably feel compassion for them. What if the person were drunk? or crippled? Though you might initially go away with a negative mental representation of the experience you might possibly have the internal strength to consciously alter the meaning of the experience and thereby minimize the emotional impact of the experience upon yourself.

Amazing as it may sound, we can consciously and intentionally alter the meaning of any experience we have in life. We can literally put ourselves into more empowering and resourceful states of consciousness as well as change the the content and context of the states we are currently
experiencing.

Its not the experiences we have in life that affect us as much as the way we represent them to ourselves. The way we communicate to ourselves directly determines the quality of our experience in life.

Say for instance you walk away from your negative encounter and replay the images and sounds of your experience over and over again, becoming more and more upset. We've all done this many times. Yet we do have a choice in changing the way we represent or communicate these experiences to ourselves. And herein lies the power we all have to improve the quality of our lives.

The quality of our life is directly impacted by the quality of our communication, primarily with ourselves, but also our communication with other people as well.

We can change the way we feel about the experience or rather our internal representation of the experience, by changing the submodalities or characteristics and qualities of our internal representation.

An easy way would be to push the image back in our mind, tone down the sound and color, de-focus the image or push it way behind us into the distance. There are are a great variety of cognitive exercises that can be employed in this regard. By doing this consciously, we can literally change the way we feel about the experience and thereby consciously choose a more beneficial and healthy behavior. By making experiences bigger, brighter and more intense in our conscious experience of them, we tend to "blow things out of proportion". But what are we really doing? We're internally representing things in such a way that they overwhelm and overpower us. By changing the way that we represent our experiences in our minds we literally change the impact we feel emotionally. This can be done with positive experiences as well. People who are chronically depressed consistently represent the experiences of their life in a negative disempowering way. People who are arrogant and conceited tend to over exaggerate their abilities and qualities and also represent them to themselves and others in an exaggerated way. The same methodology is applied to both of these mentally imbalanced views.

As Lao Tsu once said: "If we do not change direction, we will end up where we are headed."

George Harrison penned these similar lyrics before he died: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

Again, these cognitive technologies can empower you to take control of your mental states and emotions and free you from the misconception that the external environment is controlling your behavior and emotions. The passion and power that gives energy to life comes from a compelling purpose. A purpose that has a life-supporting basis is a powerful paradigm of purposeful living. The most powerful paradigm of purposeful living is a personal and global view of spiritual dedication. By tapping the power of the conscious self we'll locate and unlock our own inherent energies that fuel our personal positive transformations from the inside out.

When we think of persons who have most powerfully impacted human society and consciousness we tend to think of individuals who had very high ideals of spiritual dedication. Like Christ, Buddha and Krishna. Thousands of years have passed yet their lives, activities and teachings continue to give life and inspiration to this day. In recent times we can recall individuals like Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. They all had a cause and a purpose that was bigger than themselves and it drew great power into manifestation. Through dedication, your life can take on a deeper meaning and power as well.

Everything proceeds from consciousness, or as Shakespeare said..."thinking makes it so...."



Guided Meditation:

Close your eyes and imagine something that has been troubling you. Vividly picture in your mind the person or circumstance that triggers an emotionally negative response within you. Make it big and bright and in full color. Notice how you feel about the images. Now reduce their size, intensity and color. Make them black and white, shrink them into the distance or down to the size of a grain of sand in the palm of your hand. Now how do you feel about them?