It’s that time of year when people talk about their desires, resolutions, goals, and intentions for the next year.  Most of those goals will be abandoned before the leftovers from New Year’s Day dinner are gone. People tend to do what they’ve done before — even if it didn’t work.  They don’t know what else to do.  Their beliefs limit their mind so they can’t see what lies outside of their little box.

Desires

The process of manifesting desires is very different from the initiate’s perspective.  Initiates consider all desires to be worthwhile. Their goal is never the fulfillment of those desires, although that often happens, because our True Self can fulfill all desires with ease.  The initiate knows that desires create a catalyst for letting go.  Having desires exposes the beliefs that we need to let go by bringing them into our conscious awareness.   As we shed those beliefs, we either get our desires or we forget about them.  But either way, desires served our quest for freedom.

Most people use mental (affirmations, visualization, etc.) or physical actions to achieve desires.  Beliefs rise to the surface, and people obey them even if they don’t want to.  If they don’t obey their beliefs, they don’t fulfill their desires.  We admire people who can beat their beliefs into submission with willpower and hard work or leap over their beliefs with a single bound — usually they’re also good at projecting their unwanted beliefs on to others.  Getting desires is considered success; not getting them is failure.  The journey isn’t very pleasant.

As the New Year approaches, we view life as if we’re starting over.  We’re often more aware of our desires.  But the beliefs we had last year that caused us to fail are still there unless we’ve been letting go.  The initiate focuses on finding the beliefs in their mind that keep their desires from manifesting.  They don’t jump into action or use their will to fulfill desires.  They take action only if it’s inspired, joyous, and fun.  Otherwise, they keep letting go.

Beliefs

We find our beliefs by watching our mind as we lightly think about our desires; or we ask questions to expose beliefs.  Of course, when the answers (beliefs) arise, we must discriminate.  Often the answers we hear in our mind are widely believed, socially correct, or traditional.  They might sound like guidance or God talking.  They’re going to look true and real because we believed them before.  If our desires are long standing, we’re probably highly psychological reversed (meaning that we accept beliefs that feel bad as true).

Let’s look at a common example — dropping weight.  We have a desire to change our body weight.  We can even see ourselves at the perfect weight.  That’s all we have to do with our desire.  It’s recorded.

Now we have to find the beliefs that keep the weight from just falling off effortlessly doing activities or eating food we enjoy.  Let’s assume that the first belief to arise is, “I have to join a gym and work out.”  Let’s assume that thought arises with lots of emotion.  We don’t like working out.  The emotion is saying, “That thought isn’t the truth.”  A battle with our mind has begun.  We live in a reality where lots of people lose weight by working out for long hours.  There are zillions of programs and trainers.  Dr. Oz will tell you that you need to do this.  But none of that matters.  We’re looking for our truth. If a thought is accompanied by emotion, it’s not true for us.

Our false mind will try to force us to accept the widely-accepted status quo.  When we follow another person’s beliefs on any subject, we’re believing that we don’t have the answer to fulfilling our desires.   We need to let that belief go; it isn’t true.  But we usually don’t.  Instead, we accept more beliefs that we’re told are the right beliefs.  Eventually, we’ll get tired of this solution, usually after paying lots of money to borrow the expert’s beliefs.  We’ll see the stupidity of it.  In addition, their solution will lack staying power.  Their enthusiasm might be real; their solution might have been the right solution for them.  But that doesn’t mean it’s right for us.  What’s right for us will feel good.  We won’t have to will ourselves to do it.

People look outside to others for answers.  But the only answer that works permanently is the answer that lives in our True Self.  We find that by letting go of the beliefs that veil it.

So the gym thought feels horrible, and we let it go.  Now we think, “I have to find a diet.”  The normal person will go buying books, making diet food, and enrolling in programs.  But we’re an initiate; we notice the diet thought generates emotions.  So we let the thought and emotions go.

If we keep following our chain of beliefs, we’ll start to find the hidden causes.  We’ll find more and more beliefs about food, exercise, and body that have supported our weight.  We might find relationship beliefs or beliefs about career.  If weight has been an issue for much of our life, this won’t be a weekend job.  It’s a new way of life.  We’ll find more  beliefs arise every time we eat.  We’ll find beliefs arise if we sit down and do nothing.  We’ll find beliefs when we visit family and friends.  But now we’re on the right path.  We’ve become aware of the complex system of beliefs that exists within our mind.  And we’ll keep letting go for days, months, or years until we’re free.  Our desires have served their purpose.   Then one day, we’ll forget our desires ever existed because they’re manifesting.  We don’t need desires when we easily get everything we want and need.  And all that struggle in the past will be nothing but a waking dream that really was just an illusion.