Pagan Metaphysics 101: Companion

Beginning Enlightenment 101: Companion – Changing Old Patterns with Affirmations – Excerpt

Evolving the Spirit

Making Change In Your Life
How can you change old patterns, release karma and improve your underlying thought patterns? What simple exercise can you do each day to help the evolution of your spirit? It starts with a simple 5-step process through Acknowledgment, Acceptance, Forgiveness, Action and Letting Go.

Acknowledgment
You can’t release something until you know it exists or are willing to admit it exists. Your first step is to acknowledge the thought pattern and how it affects your life.

Acceptance
Once you’ve faced the fact it does exist, you have to accept it. This is part of learning unconditional love of the self. You cannot acknowledge the situation and then spend the next several years judging your self for that character trait. Accept the characteristic or action without judgment and accept it with love. As I’m fond of saying “You cannot change the past, you can only change the way you allow the past to affect your present and your future”. The next step then is learning to accept who and what you are, without judgment or guilt.

Forgiveness
Now that you’ve accepted the pattern, give yourself a break and forgive yourself for taking on this pattern. You’re human and we all do things and take on things that aren’t good for us. No one can expect you to be absolutely perfect. So don’t expect that from yourself. No matter how hard a person tries, they will never be perfect nor should they try to be. It is what it is, you’ve acknowledged the pattern and you want to change it. Focus on that. Forgive yourself for making the same mistakes and for doubting yourself. You’ve come this far, you’re already half way to changing the negative to positive.

Action
Now the Action to correct these thought patterns, or repay this karmic debt can be implemented. In affecting change in your life, you are letting go of the past and moving toward self-growth and enlightenment. Action can be as simple as using an affirmation to reprogram your subconscious thoughts. But typically it also requires a little conscious effort on your part to enact that affirmation when confronted with situations that might cause you to fall back on the old thought pattern.

It’s not enough to give your self lip service through an affirmation. You have to begin to engrain the new thought pattern into your daily life and act or react accordingly. You don’t have to do this all at once. Start with one negative thing that occurs in your day and work to change that to a positive by the end of the day. Little by little you’ll begin to notice that your actions and reactions become more natural, you don’t have those nagging negative thoughts any longer. You begin to live the new positive thoughts you had hoped to evolve into.

Letting Go
By changing your inner perspective you will change the way you respond to situations in your life. But you can’t move forward and overcome the past mistakes until you let them go. You don’t need to carry the baggage of the past into the future. It will not serve you any purpose or provide you with any feelings of security and safety. Set the past aside and let it go.

Some people like to write down what they have worked on and how they changed the pattern in their life. Others like to take the writing and toss in a fire, letting it go with the wind of change. Whatever your method is, trust that the old is gone and that your new life is focused on the positive change your reaching for today.

Affirmations And Healing
One of the easiest and best ways to help bring about change in your life it so focus on replacing negative thinking with positive thinking through affirmations. Affirmations are a way of reprogramming the subconscious to think differently and to automatically react in a more positive way when trigger situations occur in your life.

For instance, if you have problems with anxiety, you can use an affirmation to alter the underlying thought process associated with this ailment. First thing to do is understand what causes your anxiety. The underlying metaphysical cause of anxiety is “Not trusting the flow and process of life.”

Affirmation Example:
I am the embodiment of the Great Spirits,
I trust the process and flow of life.
I love and approve of myself. I am safe.
And So It Is.

It sounds simple, but reciting this kind of basic affirmation can do a lot to change your thoughts and automatic reactions to situations that bring up anxiety in your life. You’re telling your subconscious that you are in control, not the nagging of the past from previous hurts. You are convincing yourself that you really are ok. So “let go and let god” help to move you forward.