This is a follow up to my comments last week about Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Facebook post. If you have not seen that, it is on Facebook, on my blog from last week, https://putyourhealthinyourownhands.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/what-is-inside-of-you/
As I was saying we are loaded with mind viruses, old detrimental memories, and outdated programs. They come from internal filters that determine how we see the world. There are many but these five might help us understand ourselves more completely. They are: Growing Up, Spiritual, Gender, Logic, and Professional.
First, Growing Up filters. This group of filters will vary widely depending on where you were born, the personality of your parents, the beliefs of your parents, their hobbies, their income, and social status. These filters are also formed by the political climate of our growing up years, our parents’ political views, where we went to school and our childhood friends.
Anyone who has been molested, raped, humiliated, beaten, bullied, or physically and mentally harmed as a child will carry filters that modify their current thoughts with fear, caution, mistrust, and so on. Many times, these filters are produced by experiences with those we loved and who are supposed to care for us. So now we are stuck with a very negative experience connected with someone we trusted, such as a parent, teacher, minister, doctor, sibling, friend, and so forth.
Fortunately, most of us have dealt with most of these memories, filters, and programs and can function fairly well in our families and in society. But some of us are limited by these memories so that we are stuck and cannot reach our full potential. Many times when we try to change, it feels threatening because the filter was created by some powerful person from our past and we may have been very small and powerless when it was created.
The second filter is Spiritual. This group of filters comes from our past spiritual experiences and teachings. Some people have no experience with any form of spiritual teaching. Most of us who have some spiritual teaching may have learned that God is a large supernatural entity outside of ourselves who controls all aspects of our lives and is a judgmental parent who will punish us if we do not follow all the rules.
Depending on your spiritual influences, you may or may not have been taught to ask questions such as: “Is there a God? Is there a God who has created the Universe and predetermines all of our life experiences? Is this creator of the Universe benevolent or judgmental and ready to condemn us to eternal hell?
We generally accept our parental teaching until we come to some age of discernment, then we either accept their beliefs for life or modify them in some way. If you grew up with a belief in a judgmental, vindictive God of the universe, it can make change very difficult if that belief is not congruent with the life you desire to create. It is difficult, not impossible.
It is important to understand that when you use your mind to change some of these filters, that whether you are religious, spiritual, or neither is of no concern. These filters exist in your mind. You use your mind to remove them. You get to decide if you use religious techniques or not. Both ways are valid.
The third filter is Gender. What did your parents teach you about men and women? Are you lady-like or a tom boy? A macho man or a femme fatale? A hunter or shopper? Who are your role models for men and women? What are your gender roles for professions and household jobs? Do real men wear pink?
This filter may be clouded by unpleasant past experiences with a “bad” husband or wife. Hormones play a definite role in our gender feelings. Most of us have been conditioned that God is male. Most religions are patriarchal. Why are “nature,” the “Earth,” and man’s “hot car” referred to as “she”? All of these filters have been put in place by someone. At some point, we have to deal with the validity of these concepts and remove any that are detrimental.
The fourth is the Logic filter. Our beliefs and thoughts must make sense. Our “logic” is often not really logic but beliefs and opinions based on our other filters. Is something real or not real? Most of our logic comes from what we have seen or read. Sometimes it comes from what we have seen on television or on the internet. These things may or may not be real. This question must be answered about everything in our lives before we can move into a paradigm of co-creation. Sometimes we simply have to agree to disagree.
The fifth is called the Professional filter. What we have learned in school and professional training is a filter. The professional filter works well with the growing up filter. We all want to be accepted and follow the rules. We often worry about what people will think of us if some new concept does not fit with our professional training.
Every filter that we currently accept has been brought to us by someone we trusted, respected, and loved. A parent, a sibling, a teacher, a clergyman. If someone tells us something different or wants us to modify our beliefs, change can become very difficult because the filters are put in place by someone we loved, someone who was doing the best they could at the time. Even if the filter is outdated, its source makes change difficult. Even so, change is possible and usually desirable.
These five sets of filters and several more create our personality. We do not want to change them all. We generally have no need to change most of them. But some of these concepts and things that we believe are not accurate, and in order for us to move forward and get ahead and create an amazing life, they must be changed.
In my new book, A Shortcut to Success, I explain a variety of very useful techniques that will remove the mind viruses and many of the detrimental filters that limit our lives. You can learn how to take off the glasses. In the meantime, here is a fun one that is quite effective of eliminating some of those pesky memories that we really do not want to look at again.
The Mental Enema
Sometimes we are unable to find exactly what might be holding us back and keeping us from getting ahead. I have used the following exercise, which I call ‘the mental enema’.
Get very relaxed in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for a few minutes. Close your eyes and imagine you are standing in a shower stall. Now imagine plugging a large hose into your ear and feeling it flushing all the bad memories and limiting thoughts out of your body through the bottoms of your feet and down the drain of the shower. You can make any version of this that you like. This is a great general cleansing tool for hidden mental and emotional memories that are out of your awareness.
When we update our filters and remove mind viruses, what comes out of us, when we get squeezed, is wholesome and good, based on faith and certainty rather than doubt and fear.
Put Your Health in Your Own Hands.
Put Your Health in Your Own Hands 