imagination
Change Your Life With Mantras And Affirmations
We live in difficult and uncertain times, and happiness often seems elusive. It is possible, however, through training your mind, to ‘flip a switch’ to activate feelings of joy and happiness with just a few words. This is known as affirmations and mantras.
The two concepts are somewhat similar or related. Mantras are short words or phrases used in meditation in order to create focus, peace and calm, as in the practice of Zen. Affirmations are positive statements of intention that are repeated frequently to create new neural pathways, thought patterns and energy frequencies.
It’s easy to incorporate these two techniques into your daily spiritual practice.
Mantras
If you already meditate, you may choose a traditional mantra, such as Ananda (the Sanskrit word for bliss) or Ohm (the primordial, sacred sound of all creation). You could also choose another mantra that has special meaning for you, or even create your own.
As you engage in meditation, pay special attention to your breath as you focus on you mantra, either spoken aloud, or silently in your mind. Let all negativity go as you exhale. Repeat this process for 10 to 20 minutes each day, preferably in the same place, without any outside distractions. This way your mind begins to associate your mantra with feelings of calm and serenity.
Tomorrow Will Worry About Itself
Scrolling through my Facebook feed today, I noticed a link to an article titled, “Hell Is Coming.” It featured a graph for the stock market plummeting deeply into the red. Obviously, I did not read the article – the picture and title said enough!
I am sure you have also been noticing an increase in negative messages on social media platforms and in the mainstream news. As a spiritually aware person, I don’t see any intrinsic value in this kind of negative speculation.
Yes, we all must deal with the circumstances that we are currently facing in our world, and it is important to effectively process our feelings along the way. However, when it comes to speculation, there is no difference between a positive speculation and a negative speculation. They are both fantasies conjured in the minds of others, spreading through our adoption of it.
According to some self-proclaimed ‘experts’ the sky is currently falling! Fortunately, I have never taken much stock in conspiracy theories and doomsday soothsayers.
It is true that we are going through a time of unprecedented change, and we are facing challenges that we have never faced before. But, that dramatic article could have easily read, “A Cure For Covid-19 Is Coming” or “This Is A Great Time To Invest In Affordable Stocks.” Why is it that we don’t see many opinions about best-case-scenarios out there?
Finding The Calm Within
Be afraid. Yes, be afraid. Be so very afraid! We are currently being bombarded with this message, not only daily, but hourly. People are very worried, anxious and fearful for a variety of valid reasons. To be honest, I believe our greatest source of anxiety is that we no longer seem to have much control over our lives.
In the modern world we have become so conditioned to mindless purchasing, consuming, and discarding, that we hardly give much thought anymore to our daily habits and lifestyle choices, whether useful or not. We also expect and demand certain privileges and freedoms, and it is shocking to have our normal, everyday routines disrupted, especially when we have no idea when things will return to normal.
I feel this is actually the most frightening aspect of the current circumstances for most people. We feel that we have lost control over our lives. And every morning, we tune back into our daily update of doom, gloom and negative dialogue, which of course only resets our fright buttons!
A better way to start your day would be to take a few minutes to reconnect to the safe and secure part of yourself, namely the inner spirit. Here, all is well, all is serene, and all is safe. Become mindful of your breathing and calm your mind. Then do a visualization that creates a sense of joy, peace and serenity.
Easy Ways To Manifest What You Need
The belief some people have that manifesting is difficult and complex, or requiring much effort and resources, may stop them from taking action with something they truly need in their life. If you urgently need something special, or just a bit of good luck in your life, there are a few things you can do right now to make that happen.
Visualization
The first method is visualization, which is simple enough. Just relax, close your eyes and imagine how you want a particular situation to go. For instance, you can imagine having a positive conversation with your boss that ends with him realizing you really deserve that vacation right now, or that raise, or even that promotion. Okay, maybe you deserve all of that, but let´s start with just one of those outcomes for now!
The important thing with visualization is to feel as if you already received what you desire – to feel how your body and mind accepts the new reality. If it seems too difficult to accept, this might be part of the reason why you do not have it yet. Therefore, it is important to start practicing deliberate manifesting with those things that you honestly want, and feel are not too difficult for you to accept.
Finish your visualization with a positive statement of intent, such as, “May it be so, or something better for all.” Then open your eyes. This could be done in just a couple of minutes, with some practice.
How To Overcome Negative Thought Patterns
There are times when one may be feeling very serene, and completely at peace with ourselves and the world. One may even be feeling highly satisfied with the spiritual growth and personal healing you have accomplished thus far. Then, quite unexpectedly, you lose your sense of alignment. You suddenly feel ‘disconnected’ from the source of our being.
This feeling is especially triggered when one feels overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities, or the constant demands of others. And once we slip into this negative state of mind, many deeply buried, unpleasant memories tend to emerge in our consciousness in the form of haunting ‘flashbacks.’
I recently heard a friend referring to this experience as cognitive distortion. We can so easily begin to catastrophize, and expect the ‘other shoe to drop,’ once our anxiety level becomes this amplified. The mind is powerful and under these circumstances we tend to indulge in a lot of ‘what if’ thinking. The mind races, imagining all the worst case scenarios as potential outcomes.
This kind of catastrophic thinking typically takes our mind into two directions. Firstly, it puts a truly negative spin on the current situation. And secondly, it causes us to anticipate all the many, many things that could possibly go wrong in the future.
Polarized thinking is another problem for some of us. This thought pattern is when we only see things in terms of right or wrong, and this can lead to setting unachievable standards for ourselves and others, as well as send our stress levels through the roof! Polarized thinking crops up when we find ourselves basing our hopes and expectations on, for example, getting that dream job, impressing other people, finding our soulmate, becoming famous, and so on.
How To Attract Abundance And Prosperity
In today’s economic climate many hard-working people are constantly worrying about making ends meet. Sadly, this can lead to a sense of desperation, and when we are in such a place it becomes even more challenging to attract prosperity and abundance. Indeed, financial distress can result in a spiraling negative mindset, which in turn creates further negative energy, resistance and blockages.
Fortunately, there are certain things we can do, on both a practical and spiritual level, to alleviate financial stress. In turn, this raises our energy vibration to a more positive frequency, where we can begin to attract a much healthier bank balance!
Get Practical
The first step is to get practical. We live in a practical world and therefore we need to take a pragmatic approach when and where necessary. Spirit can only begin to assist and support us once we take some action and accept personal responsibility.
Unless you are in a practical, active mindset, any spiritual or metaphysical attempts at working with the Law of Attraction to change your financial situation would be a complete waste of time. Hence the practical advice first!
Ask yourself, for example, whether you can save any money by reconsidering your monthly expenses and revising your spending habits. look at ways and means of cutting any unnecessary excess expenditures. Consider selling items that you no longer need, to generate some immediate funds.
Connecting With Your Psychic Self
We all sometimes have unusual occurrences or extraordinary experiences that are not easily defined, or understood, by logic or practical thinking. Many of these events are often psychic or paranormal in nature.
For example, I am clairaudient and therefore I frequently hear voices. Earlier in my life I did not understand what this was, but I have since learned that there are sometimes conversations going on that I am privy to …conversations that are emanating from the Other Side, from beyond this world.
I don’t always recognize the spirits, or understand the gist of the conversation, but I no longer have any qualms accepting these auditory perceptions as a psychic or paranormal phenomenon. Of course, there are experts in the fields of Psychiatry and Psychology who will certainly not not agree!
Dreams are a common psychic phenomenon for many people. You might have had particular dreams yourself, where the events that you dreamt actually came to fruition. We all sometimes dream the future and this indeed qualifies as a psychic experience, and a psychic ability we all have.
Many of us experience lucid dreams, and some even have daytime visions. We typically do not trust that it actually was a psychic vision, or we question whether or not it was only our imagination. Well, what is imagination if not another word for visual creations?