Making way for Spiritual Affirmations

Watching and erasing negative self-talk

Affirmations are often misunderstood. I practiced formal, daily affirmations, repeatedly and was frustrated when what I affirmed did not come about. I followed the formulas. I listened to hours and hours of tapes. I wrote out pages of positive affirmations. Still, I experienced little or no change in my life. What did I do wrong?

I did not realize that I affirm (and still do) all the time

When I began to practice watching my thoughts, I observed that affirmations were not new to me. I constantly affirmed and reaffirmed all the time. I believed what I saw and saw what I believed. I was in a circular self-perpetuating situation. It was as if I had a permanent blue lens over my awareness. I could only see blue. This blue lens, my old belief, filtered out every other potential color in the spectrum.

In the same way that having a cast on your leg makes you aware of all others who are in cast, so too does having a particular belief mean you will notice and actively seek out thoughts that match the belief. The practice of watching the mind revealed to me that I decided what thoughts to choose or, better put, I am magnetized to certain thoughts from the many that rise out of the mind's stream of consciousness.

Watching my mind showed me that I always affirm: good, bad, or indifferently. It is an innate quality of mind that it searches for congruence. That understanding changed my life. I began to let go of being a victim of the mind and its thoughts.

Some of the steps in applying the formal affirmation process are left out

Denying and resisting beliefs that are in direct opposition to an affirmation is like lying to yourself. Try it. Say a positive affirmation.

Your affirmation might be, "I am peaceful." Now pause after you say it, you will hear, or perhaps just 'feel,' your real beliefs, "Yeah, peaceful," comes the thought, "Except this morning, when you were grumping at the traffic. What about when you were thinking about paying down the credit card, or when Sally forgot your lunch date? What about the kid's blaring radio?"

Pause and gently allow yourself the space to listen to what comes to mind. After you say the new positive statement, up pops the beliefs you already hold. They are the beliefs that run in the background of your awareness. They are the beliefs you check with before doing anything. They are what you know to be true. As soon as you say the "new affirmation," you re-affirm the present one — the one you truly believe.

This little test shows you that your thoughts and feelings will automatically defend a present belief. You will absolutely resist the new affirmation when a present, opposing one, is in place.

A way to resolve this battle is by noticing or watching your thoughts

Watching your thoughts allows you to step back from them, and from your mind. Doing so means you become much more aware of what is going on within your personal consciousness. You gradually become aware of what it is you say and agree to during your day.

Watching your thoughts helps you begin to notice that you have complete faith in all the beliefs you hold. Then the next step is to decide to address and release the negative ones.

Be willing to notice, rather than own, the quantity and the frequency of the negative messages firing through your mind — messages that seem to be just for you because they reflect your personal beliefs. What you are attracted to, the constant barrage of negativity, can be a shocking revelation. You thought you were peaceful, but after watching the mind, you face the pettiness, the anger, and the judgments flowing through the stream of consciousness on which you focus.

Tapping Therapy and EFT©, which are processes for releasing negative emotion, addresses this fact and offers a psychological reversal statement even before the releasing process begins. Experience has shown it is neccessary to address and neutralize the loyalty we have to the belief that creates the negative emotion. To defuse such resistance to change, you would say, "Even though I don't believe I can be peaceful, I accept myself."

Your work is to defuse the fact that you have such negative beliefs by realizing that everyone does. It is a fact of living.

When you attempt to "force" positivity over such beliefs, you only push down and suppress them. How can release what you do not admit you carry? How can you release what you have buried? Watching the mind reveals such beliefs. Once you acknowledge you have them, you can choose to release them, at your own pace.

Self-talk: criticism and put-downs are very disheartening

You simply would not tolerate anyone talking to you the way your self-talk reveals you talk to yourself. You may not recognize the self-talk in words, because it is most often expressed as a flash of negative emotion that you instantly decipher. When you affirm a new belief, only to experience the dread in your stomach, the tightness in our shoulders, the headaches, the fatigue, and a nagging disheartening feeling, such responses are the product of hidden, lightening-fast, negative self-talk.

The simple practice of standing back from your thoughts, helps you to notice when you do this. The play of inner negative commercials, carried out with conviction and passion, sound like this: "I don't know how; I never remember; it is not safe; I can't; I'll never change; it won't work for me; I'm afraid; if I don't do (fill in the fear) then he/she won't love me; nothing works for me; life is hard," and so on.

Watching undermines your absolute loyalty to beliefs

Because you have such thoughts does not mean you have to accept them or respond to them in any way. Stand away from them — stop fueling your loyalty to them. Doing this enables you to discover the source of the inner negativity — negativity that has played out in your mind and controlled your actions.

Remember, we are all masters at affirming

What you affirm keeps you locked into the belief. Such beliefs can be against your best interests. Watching the mind makes it obvious when you are prejudiced against yourself. When the hidden is brought out and found to be false, you will drop it.

Surprisingly and effortlessly, watching your thoughts neutralizes the barrage of negativity. Those beliefs simply do not hold the same certainty they once did. They no longer fit who you are, nor what you are. Neither do they fit with what you really want. Now truthful inner statements attract your attention. You begin to focus on kinder, more positive self-talk, because your beliefs attract you to them.

So what do you do?

Your thoughts seem extremely personal; they seem to be of you. Learn to step aside from such beliefs. Choose to notice the process of thinking. Doing this clearly reveals that you are always attracted to and choosing the thoughts you think. You are choosing from millions of potential ones. Thoughts are a quality of mind and continuously rise in consciousness.

Make way for new positive affirmations by watching your mind and erasing the emotional charge of the negative self-talk. ("Watching the Mind" is the first spiritual exercise in "At Your Heart's Pace".)

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