The awakening process begins with noticing that we have patterns, automatic things we do repeatedly by some magical force otherwise known as our subconscious. We don’t learn to walk every day we just naturally get up and do it. If our brains weren’t able to be conditioned we would still be infants, basically helpless physically and emotionally.
Thank goodness we don’t have to remember how to perform all the automatic biological functions either, everything works fine for most of us and our bodies have the ability to heal itself except in catastrophic injury like losing a limb or death. So, most people eventually learn to care for the body to keep it in shape so that we can enjoy life, have families, love and learn. The experience of life is what we accomplish while we are on this planet. What I want to discuss is this experience, because it is what brings most people in to see a therapist or counselor.
All of our lives we are being conditioned, from birth to death. In childhood most of our experiences are overwhelming for our tiny nervous systems and many of those memories get stored for later processing as an adult. Seems simple, but this is one of the most difficult hurdles I have worked with, mainly because I’ve personally struggled with this phenomenon. Children are given messages that are unspoken and implied using pain and discomfort in a reward and punishment cycle. What this creates in the subconscious is a repetitive patterning to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Furthermore, as we age and begin to have a functioning pre-frontal cortex that develops in adolescence, we begin to make meanings out of the conditioning, rationalizing that there must be something wrong if I feel pain, or chasing any attention in desperate search for positive feedback. This behavior solidifies the conditioning process and if left unchecked, can lead to all kinds of dysfunction, mental disorders, suicide, and autoimmune disorders.
A large part of my work with clients is in identifying feelings, patterns of behavior and self-judgments of these. But I started to question, what comes after identifying and processing, which is just another word for thinking. Is it enough to know or can we go further into changing our conditioned response, identifications, and change our lives? In some circles, this process is known as “letting go of Ego” or allowing the Ego to die. But our self-concept which is what Ego as defined by Freud means, is not actually a problem but necessary if we are going to step out of our old subconscious patterns and make new, healthier ones. It is an integral piece of the process and we need our Ego. What I propose is another way to look at patterning and this whole conditioning process and I want to do it in terms relating to energy.
Scientists and doctors have been working with the electromagnetic fields in and around the human body for centuries and we are getting very close to some big discoveries and new frontiers of medicine because of this work. What used to be in the back of the bookstore under the genre “Metaphysical Phenomenon” is now out in front and on best seller lists. Now, I’m not a superstitious person and I don’t “knock on wood” anymore, but I did in the past and many people today are very superstitious or follow ancient practices and belief systems. All of these are how humans have tried to understand the essence of being human in this world.
As we move into understanding of the complexity of genetics, epigenetics (which simply means above genetics), and electromagnetic fields we have to open our minds to even greater frontiers, including Quantum Theory. Simply put, the application of QT in behavioral and simple terms is every option is expressed. For example, imagine one human behavior say, speaking. Everyone speaks a little bit differently, but evolution has made it possible for that behavior to exist in the human body, and it is expressed 8+ billion different ways (current population), all existing at the same time on the planet. Additionally, the process of thinking and what we now know about brain plasticity is that there is never one way to think about anything, which can be interpreted as all thinking occurs simultaneously with every outcome available simultaneously. This can make a huge impact on someone struggling with a specific problem in their life. Sometimes, simply knowing that someone else on the other side of the world or even next door has a completely different understanding than you do and is just as valid as your thought or idea. Let that soak in for a moment.
So, what if every thought has an energy, a vibration to it? Wouldn’t that be one way the Universe can group like minded people? We can’t all read each other’s minds, however we can and do group together with people who are energetically comfortable to be around. That is also known as “preference”. We can prefer to be around people that make us feel good or we can prefer to be around people that make us not feel good, but what determines that is our Conditioning. What our subconscious identifies as familiar or unfamiliar. We don’t attract people who are “bad for us” we attract energies that are familiar to us. No conscious thought process involved at all. Where our consciousness comes in is when we start waking up to our choices and the results of our choices. When we are unable to make conscious choices either because of denial of feelings (which is energy in the body) or we are too busy distracting or disengaging using alcohol or other drugs to escape the human experience, we suffer.
This is a lot of information just to say that feeling and identifying energy with the knowledge and consciousness of your conditioning, you can change your life. That all options of thinking and behaving is available to you because we witness that fact in that everyone else is living out all of the options simultaneously on the planet. There are 8 + billion ways to experience life, there can’t be a collective “right way” to think or do anything. I hope this gives you something to think about in your contemplative time and look for more blogs in the future as I continue to empty my brain onto the page.
Thank you for reading!
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