Our conscious mind — believe it or not — is not in charge of our day-to-day behaviour.That claim may seem counter intuitive and contrary to our experience, but it has been demonstrated in controlled experiments time and again. By the time our conscious mind is aware of any particular decision or action, it has already been made or enacted by some other part of our brain.
Our conscious mind — believe it or not — is not in charge of our day-to-day behaviour.That claim may seem counter intuitive and contrary to our experience, but it has been demonstrated in controlled experiments time and again. By the time our conscious mind is aware of any particular decision or action, it has already been made or enacted by some other part of our brain.
We, are mistreated as infants and children, treated inappropriately for our species.
As a result, we keep re-creating an anti-social population. Nobody's born rotten. You just don't have bad kids. It's not true. There is no such thing. But we can make them bad.
Ironically, the reason it's possible to make these profoundly social animals bad or anti-social is because we are so social. Our parents, our tribesman, our authority figures, clearly expect us to be bad or anti-social or greedy or selfish or dirty or destructive or self-destructive. Our social nature is such that we tend to meet the expectations of our elders. Whenever this reversal took place and our elders stopped expecting us to be social and expected us to be anti-social.
It is not too late to grow into our child within, retaining the capabilities of higher thought, but fully awakening our capacity for insight of the intuitive voice.
The goal of the meditational practice at the stages is to calm the mind and bring less attachment to the outside comings and goings of life, so that we can make contact with our child within.
Living with a sense of detachment is KEY to living a meditational life.
This doesn't mean we don't care, or we are apathetic. It means that we know that life and crazy stuff happens, but it doesn't define us. It means that no matter what happens "out there" we are not affected "in here with our child within".
Our meditational practice can be a simple 5, 10 or 20-minute morning and/or evening meditation. Or we could chant a mantra or even go for a walk. The idea is to have a practice that calms the mind and brings more awareness to the breath and to the close contact with the intuitive voice in our life. When we have less attachment to the outside world and the circumstances thereof, we are more powerful creators and co-creators of our own life.
We are no longer defined on an experiential level by our circumstances, so we can begin to mold our outer world to match our inner world, instead of the other way around.
Without a meditational practice every day we can become lost and so attached to what happens that we get lost in the world.
The great spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti was once asked the key to his happiness, to which he said, "I don't mind how it goes."
This is a POWERFUL statement. This is the essence of RECOVERY. Our definition of RECOVERY here at THE STAGES is "unconditional acceptance of what is". Note, I did NOT say unconditional TOLERATION of what is. There's a difference. We do not and should not tolerate hateful behavior. But we are powerless to change anything without first accepting it.
So, with our meditational practice we can accept what happens in the outside world without it needing to define who we are.
And in doing so, we start to cultivate a POWERFUL perspective that will allow us to transcend our circumstances and truly give our gifts to the world.
Well, because we believe that repeated immersion in our child within growth environment really helps us grow.
We really believe that dedication to our course work calls for repeat immersion. Anything worth doing takes time.
Two of the things we are dedicated to gently mastering are the art of personal growth and child within connection. We feel these two things are the pillars that our recoveries hang on.
When we can master these, we can gently master our recovery and anything that comes our way.
These are awesome reset buttons and reminders for us to keep our connection within our child within fresh.
When we really get our wakeup call.
We realise that most of what we have been doing in life was based on the need to get approval of other people and seem important to them. We believed that if we are important enough, then we would get the approval that we craved deep down.
The more we strived for personal importance, the less approval we get.
It is so strange.
When we focus on service - life opens up. And that an act of Loving-Kindness is indeed the most significant act that we can ever express or thing that we could be.
This shift in our awareness paves the way for a whole new life of recovery to open up for us.
In the stages that we've had over the years, the two main qualities that have demonstrated the greatest return or caused the most growth for us are being willing and open-minded.
We know we've stopped growing when we start to believe that we know everything or that we think we've learned all there is to learn.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
So We are excited to start today on another journey with fellow Stagers and let our child within take us on a ride, with our child's mind and fully stepping in as a stager.
Where in our life do we think we know it all, or cannot grow?
How can you take on the identity of a student, humble ourself and be open to seeing and learning something new for recovery to take place today?
Re-developing our self-esteem requires an act of revelation, or several mini-revelations, in which we begin to separate from group thought and establish our child withins sense of authority. We may suddenly; realise we hold an opinion different from our family or our peers, but in either case we will have difficulty freeing ourselves from the group's energy, whose strength depends upon numbers and opposition to most expressions of individuality The act of finding our own voice, even in mini-revelations, is significant. Our maturity is measured not by the sophistication of a our opinions, but by their genuineness and the courage necessary to express and maintain them. By courage, we do not mean the intractable stubbornness of two people locking horns, Our Child Withins maturity is the capacity to stand our ground as a reflection of a genuine inner belief.
The Law of Attraction, Power of Positive Thinking and Intention are all extremely powerful tools to help you attract and manifest your highest potential. However, they are all secondary to intuition. Unless you are walking on the path that your child within knows it must walk on none of these tools will work properly for you. If you're living a fear based life and believe that your dreams aren't real, then the Law of Attraction will give you unrealised dreams, the Power of Positive thinking and Intention will turn into hopeless wishing because you're taking action based on fear. Once you cross over and say "Yes!" to what you child within knows it should be doing, only then will these tools be of any use to you! We are not five sensory beings; we have 6 senses, intuition being the sixth and most important sense. Once you learn to trust and take action only on your child withins guidance then and only then will you know recovery.
The Self-Absorption Overlay We are all self-absorbed to at least some degree. Problems occur when we spends so much time focused on ourselves that it starts to negatively impact on our life. It can lead us into addiction, and interfere with our ability to build successful relationships. When we are always thinking about ourselves will suffer a lot more. Western culture encourages us to develop selfish tendencies because of focus on individuality. Self-absorption is far less common in eastern cultures where the focus is on the community. Self-absorption occurs when we become so preoccupied with ourselves that we lose touch with the outside world. We spend a significant amount of time thinking about ourselves, but some of us spend almost all our time trapped inside our own narrow concerns. We will become so caught up in our own thoughts and feelings that we ignore the thoughts and feelings of other people. Self-absorption overlay is being trapped inside a prison. It prevents us from getting the most out of our recovery.
The more we become focused on our problems the more we will tend to suffer. Thinking about personal difficulties excessively is not beneficial in any way. When we become less self-absorbed tend to be a lot happier.
Self-absorption overlay is an unattractive character trait. It can be hard for us who are so focused on ourselves to make any sort of genuine friendships. It can also make it difficult for people to establish romantic relationships if they appear too needy.
It can be really difficult for friends because feels like their own needs are always being ignored. When we are self-absorbed we do not really care about other people’s feelings and perspective. It is all me, me, me . When we are over-layered with self-absorbed we become more prone to becoming addicted to alcohol or drugs. This obsession with self is one of the characteristics of the addiction.
When we have self absorption we have an overlaying feeling of being superior to everyone else. This manifests in us as an inability to recognise the feelings and emotions of other peopleWe have a deep seated need to exaggerate achievements, skills, or talents we may or may not possess.We will expect others to follow our plans. We develop a deep seated need for constant attention and praise. Our self esteem is fragile to non-existent. Our exterior personality is one of Grandiosity and self-importance.We have an inability to handle criticism.We become easily offended and hurt
We Set goals that are far too high and becoming disappointed when they are not achieved becoming uncaring about the problems other people experience.Looking down on people who are considered inferior and consequently having inability to maintain relationships becoming jealousy of successful people.We spend inordinate amounts of time fanaticising about power and success
Substance dependents tend to be overly self-absorbed and this tendency usually continues into sobriety. It is suggested that it is this proneness to self-absorption that leads the individual into addiction in the first place. If we fail to reduce our level of self-absorption we may find it impossible to find real happiness in a life away from alcohol or drugs.
There are different ways that we can combat absorption overlay such as:
Helping other people is probably the most effective way of reducing the obsession with self. By focusing on other people’s problems we are able to see beyond their own narrow concerns. Meditation may seem to be a selfish activity to those who have never practiced it but it is quite the opposite. Loving kindness meditation can greatly increase the amount of compassion that the individual feels for other people. Meditation techniques such as the ten stage courses are wonderful at moving us away from the obsession with self.
We can train ourselves to think more about other people. It becomes a habit and eventually we will be more outwardly focused without even trying. Empathy is the ability to understand how the other person is feeling. It is possible to develop more empathy by just practicing it.Learning to listen is a vital skill us who wants to reduce our focus on self. This means being fully attentive when the other person is speaking. A good idea is to silently count to ten after the other person has stopped talking before giving a reply. Rejoicing in the success of stagers and others is also highly beneficial to rejoining our child within and brokering a new healthy environment.
