in case you missed it:  EFFECT DRIVEN-A NEW PATH TO HAPPINESS   #1 of 4

--★★EFFECT DRIVEN- A NEW PATH TO HAPPINESS (#2 of 4)

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Welcome Bmindfullers:

Announcing Free and Ridiculously Rewarding Bmindful Workshop Series

Feel free to begin posting NOW(:

The Magician will be here every Friday from 11:00 to 12:00 EST  live to talk and chat with anyone who would like to go deeper into the material  

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   Now presenting: Effect Driven-New Way to Happiness/FREE WORKSHOP

WORKSHOP #2 OF 4

Hello my lovelies! It is always a pleasure to be here with you.  Now last week we were speaking about how our system of beliefs can cause us to narrow what we see and experience in our realities.  One of the main causes of this narrowing effect that we discussed was thinking about things as being right, true, or correct.  This type of thinking is called “polarized thinking” or “black and white thinking”.  We went on to say that when we think like this we really only have two options because we have landed in a space of duality.  We also touched on how thinking in terms of absolutes or polarities doesn’t take the context of a situation into account and we talked about the idea that there may be multiple truths that are valid at any given time.  Finally we discussed the fact that even things like chemistry or physics that are governed by certain immovable laws of science are observed from the subjective viewpoint of the individual.  In fact if science is any indicator of our thinking process, then it stands to reason most of what we think is right, true, or correct now will be updated, changed, or outright disputed and discarded in future. 

It’s a bit of a problem for many people because most of our institutions be they educational, religious, or societal, tend to indoctrinate us into polarized thinking.  We learn in school that it is important to answer the test question correctly.  We learn in religious institutions what things are morally right.  We learn in society how to behave correctly.  We rarely teach critical thinking skills anymore and these institutions heavily favor the ability of producing the correct response but put little emphasis on how to get to it.  It becomes problematic when we take for granted what is right, true, or correct or we when don’t think for ourselves if this is right for me.  We are in essence adopting a dogma or a paradigm without questioning it and arriving at our own conclusions.  So at this point I’m not saying it’s bad to have religious beliefs as an example.  I am saying that if you explore any religion and you study it for yourself and you agree with what it tells you in terms of how to live your life or what to believe you will be a much more fulfilled individual than to have never have questioned what it’s telling you.  This is what many people describe as the difference between being religious and being spiritual.  You can be highly religious and follow all the rules but if you aren’t feeling it from a genuine place of connection to something bigger than yourself it becomes a lot of work and very unfulfilling.

Another problem we run into when we start to buy into paradigms without questioning them is that we quickly lose track of the fact that they are paradigms and we mistake them for the way reality works.  We know that history is written by the conquering force but is what we are taught in history classes actually the truth?  I know that I was taught when I was in grade school that Columbus discovered America.  Now this is problematic for several reasons.  First America was already inhabited by Native Americans when Columbus got here.  In my upbringing that part was pretty much glossed over and I know that I was barely taught about the atrocities the settlers inflicted upon Native American populations until I got to college.  The second problem with this paradigm is that there is a lot of evidence that says the Vikings actually got to North America before Columbus.  So these things that we thought were fixed aren’t really that fixed.  500 years ago everyone thought the Earth was flat.  No one was sitting around debating that fact.  It was an assumption that was mistaken for a fact about how reality worked and that’s when things get problematic.

 It is interesting to notice that the big leaps in science happened intuitively not linearly.  These leaps happened way outside the lines of what was held to be true, right or correct at the time.  So much so that it almost got Galileo and Copernicus killed, and when Einstein discovered the theory of relativity he did so by imagining he was riding a beam of light.  Einstein was not thinking about what was true.  So these big leaps can be called an expansion of consciousness and they usually happen when we can drop our filters or our system of beliefs and think about things in completely novel and creative ways.  Great writers, composers, explorers, and pioneers of every persuasion fill our history books, museums and records with discoveries and originality made possible only by the abandonment of rigid thinking.  It was by embracing a flexibility of thought that they became open to every possibility – not just a narrow selection of options held together by dogma.

Society, our upbringing, and especially religion has left us with a sense that if we don’t think or see things as either right or wrong, then we leave ourselves open to doing bad things.  What we forget is that even morality is fluid and malleable.  The Victorian version of morality was vastly different that our version.  These things change and shift over time.  In reality humans are perfectly capable of making the correct moral and ethical choices without the intervention of the state, religion, or society.  Enabling others to impose on us their view of life through a filter of what is right and wrong tends to lead some towards acting in ways that go against our innate moral and ethical positions, especially if they believe they won’t get caught.  We are all probably guilty of speeding from time to time.  The sexual scandals of which there are many, that come out of religious institutions are a classic example of this problem in the extreme.  But where healthy adults are concerned, autonomous thinking through flexibility almost always bears the greatest positive results in terms of personal freedom and fulfillment.  So for our purposes we are calling this flexibility of thinking an expansion of consciousness.  This expansion presents in the form of greater choices in our lives, and the ability to create something new or different, but mostly something which remained previously unseen.

So how does one step outside of limiting beliefs especially if they are operating unconsciously?  I would tell you a very powerful way of thinking about things is to consider the effect you wish to create in any given circumstance and then evaluate whether your behaviors are bringing you closer to that effect or further away from it.  I use this technique in couples counseling quite a bit.  If the effect you wish to create in your home is peace and happiness, then there certain behaviors that will take you closer to that effect and certain behaviors that will take you further away from it even if you may be right.  Now this is not to say you shouldn’t bring things up that bother you, but it does help to take context into account.  Couples often argue about who is right and get lost in a sequence of events when what they are really at conflict about is how something made them feel.  Thinking about the effect you wish to create often times covers both bases simultaneously.  I have found that people rarely think about the effect they wish to create, especially in their relationships.  They think relationships should just unfold without any planning, but you wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint or a business without a business plan.  When you start thinking about the effect you wish to create you stop thinking about what you should be doing and your priorities become much clearer.

Being effect driven also causes us to become more conscious of what we wish to create in any given moment even when we get lost in our own thoughts.  When we couple conscious awareness with our attention we become infinitely more powerful creators.  We are no longer hapless victims of circumstance and we start to see how we can impact reality in important ways.  You still will do good things just because it creates a better effect than doing bad things, but you step outside of the guilt and shame that often comes with moralistic judgments and so you are more likely to learn from your mistakes and acknowledge them in the first place.  It’s an interesting way to look at things in the very least, but it also gets you into the place where you don’t have to dismantle a negative belief system.  You start thinking about what you want.  You start questioning things.  You become more flexible because now it’s not about what’s true or who’s right, it’s about are you creating what you want to create?

   Next week we are going to delve into this concept a bit deeper but I wanted to leave you with a few more questions to help you see where paradigms may be operating that we take for granted as unmovable but have actually changed over time.

1. What laws can you think of that have changed over the course of your life due to societal changes in beliefs of what is true, right, or correct?
2. How have your beliefs about what is right, true, or correct shifted from your teens, your 20’s your 30’s and on?
3. How have parenting roles and expectations of parents changed from the 50’s the 70’s the 90’s and today?
4. Can you think of any major scientific revisions that have happened over the past 20, 50, or 100 years? How has this changed how we think of reality?

Reading Resources to go further:

POLARIZED THINKING & THE REMOVAL OF OPTIONS FROM REALITY

TO BE POLARIZED IS TO BE PARALYZED

TO BE POLARIZED IS NO WAY TO RUN A DEMOCRACY 

THE PERILS OF POLARIZED THINKING 

♡ ˚Allowing Beautiful Thoughts  

Posted on 02/03/2017. Last edited on 07/03/2017.

Hey there friends,

Feel free to begin posting anytime(:  

 So wonderful to have you back Magician! 

Thank you for bringing us more info to  inspire and create with!!  

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What laws can you think of that have changed over the course of your life due to societal changes in beliefs of what is true, right, or correct?

Several big changes in law such as segregation, education (PL-94-142), ADA to name just a few have been brought about due to societal changes in beliefs.  

How have your beliefs about what is right, true, or correct shifted from your teens, your 20’s your 30’s and on?

In my late teens, I thought the death penality was unacceptable and inhumane in any circumstance. As I have grown older some crimes are so horrible and Affect and Effect so many people, that under certain circumstances the death penalty should be considered. 

How have parenting roles and expectations of parents changed from the 50’s the 70’s the 90’s and today?

I see parenting roles and expectations changing from the 50's, through the 90's, and today especially in the roles of gender identification, and interracial marriages. It seems to me there is a much greater acceptance and tolerance for these complex situations. It is my hope that this trend will continue. 

Can you think of any major scientific revisions that have happened over the past 20, 50, or 100 years? How has this changed how we think of reality? In the mid 1950's it was impossible to envision sending a man to the moon. What was once unbelievable is now possible. 

Nuclear energy is now a standard. The electric light bulb, and smart phones are now part of everyone's experience. I remember our first TV and the first color shows. 

So what does all this mean to me? It means the Magician is asking us to refuse to swallow everything we are taught, read on the internet, or do because its always been done that way. We need to think for ourselves, to critically analyze and question why we do the things we do. Her probing questions seem to me to illustrate just how reality is constantly changing. 

Hi Poppy.  Yes when we don't question we are easily sucked into agendas that don't benefit us to be sure.  Critical thought is an art.

In response to The Magician's post:

1. What laws can you think of that have changed over the course of your life due to societal changes in beliefs of what is true, right, or correct?
   

I don't pay much attention to politics so the only laws that have changed that come to mind iz marijuana being legalized or decriminalized and same sex marriage being legalized. I know those are recent laws and I'm sure there have been plenty of other examples but it's just not something that I concern myself with. 

     2. How have your beliefs about what is right, true, or correct shifted from your teens,                your 20’s your 30’s and on?

Yes, this happens a lot for me. From the age of 10 I started studying racism. This was something I was very knowledgeable on and I once had a connection to one of the world's leading diversity trainers, who was acting as my mentor, but we had a disagreement about what defines "racism" and that relationship ended abruptly. I was very active in discussing and debating about the topic of race for another 4 years following that but gradually as my paradigm continued to shift I realized that what I resist persists and I no longer wanted to fight racism, I wanted it to go away so I took my energy away from it and it has indeed, to large degree for me personally, gone away.  

I've always been one to look into information on whatever matters that become of interest to me. This had led to my changing a lot of beliefs throughout my life.

Another example of this would be my no longer celebrating holidays that my family traditionally celebrates. Just like I did with learning about the social construct of racism I started doing research on the traditional holidays that my family celebrates because I wanted to know why we even celebrated them to begin with since no one in my family could tell me why we did. I no longer celebrate any of the most traditional holidays that most do in this country. I'm far happy for making this decision. Many of these traditions used to really stress me out and lacked meaning for me. I can give gifts now with a lot more meaning in the act and don't need any particular tradition to tell me when, how, and what I should be honoring.

My religious beliefs were another thing that really limited me until I got very deep into my research and personal studies of the religions I was involved with which then I finally broke my need to be tied to organized religion altogether and I've become a far more spiritual person since then and far less religious about it all.

     3. How have parenting roles and expectations of parents changed from the 50’s the                    70’s the 90’s and today?

I'm what some would like to call a 70s baby. I have only heard stories about how my parents and their siblings were raised and the same with my grandparents. From what I was told it had me believing that all parents were very abusive in early history. While my family likes to think of themselves as being close knit nearly all of them have a victim mentality. They will all tell you they were abused but then also will tell you that they forgive their parents as they were only doing what they thought was right but that's why they made changes to not do what their parents did. Yet their children will tell you the very same thing so while the generations in the family tell a story about how they have made changes the story sounds very similar told by each generation. I would still say they are being honest, that's their perception, but to the one who feels victimized that's all they can see, their own abuse. Just because they weren't abused as badly as their grandparents had abused their parents, and then the parents abused their children on a slightly less harsher scale doesn't negate their having felt they've been abused. We had great grandparents that my grandparents would tell us about them and this would create quite a monstrous image in a child's mind who already feels they are abused themselves but we were only beaten with a thick leather belt and a punched with fists while our grandmother was beaten with switches from a tree and extension cords, locked in a closest deprived of food, bathing and change of clothes, their emotional needs being withheld from her and her siblings as a form of punishment. Then after hearing that instead of receiving understanding that the abuse isn't right you get, "You have it good compared to what I did, we love you and we changed so we wouldn't do that to you." It took nearly 40 years to shake that victim mentality. I'm no longer a victim of any of that. I am victorious having survived it all, forgiven all, and I broke the pattern. With that said though, I honestly don't know how parenting roles and expectations have changed save for abuse iz not really publicly tolerated so much anymore and parents are encouraged to take more of an interest in their children's daily activities while also being encouraged to treat children less like property and afford them their dignity as being human.

     4. Can you think of any major scientific revisions that have happened over the past 20,              50, or 100 years? How has this changed how we think of reality?

Quantum Physics has radically changed everything while the rest of the world iz only trying to catch up or fight what iz being revealed on the quantum level of physical science. Scientists are becoming spiritual teachers and bridging the gap that once existed between spirituality and physical science. We are learning that we are the co-creators and ultimately that we are the Creator itself of all that we think iz real. We are not victims subjected to the nature of the universe, we are creating it with our imagination.

I'm really enjoying this workshop! Thank you so much for taking the time out to do this and make it freely available when there's obviously a great deal of value being put into it and being taken from it. 

In response to iZUHM THA iNFiNiTE's post:

I love your thoughtful repsonses iZUMH THA iNFiNiTE!  My work started out in the realm of trauma and abuse so your answer to question number 3 especially hit home.  Even the paradigm of the trauma survivor has shifted significantly.  The 1950's had a "suck it up" mentality and there was a strictly enforced code of silence.  Child abuse wasn't even considered a "thing" until the 1960's when a radiologist started noticing multiple fractures on X rays of certain children that kept coming in for treatment.  Think about that for just a moment.  Child abuse was not a recognizable problem until the 1960's.  We were protecting animals before we were protecting children.  People assumed you got to discipline your children any way you wanted to.  It was not seen as a problem therefore it wasn't a problem.  The 1970's brought into our consciousness the idea that trauma had lasting effects and this was due to the Viet Nam veterans creating their own peer run support groups because they could not find adequate help and treatment through the VA.  This was where we codified the idea of PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and at the same time a psychologist was looking at domestic violence and had coined the term "Battered Women's Syndrome" which later got incorporated into the diagnostic criteria that covered both groups.  Victims started breaking down barriers by lending their voices to causes and the term "Survivor" replaced the term victim in the 80's early 90's.  So even that whole paradigm has shifted.  I'm glad to hear you've questioned things for yourself and chose what was right for you.

♡ ˚Allowing Beautiful Thoughts  

Posted on 04/03/2017.

_quoteWe cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. _{Hildegard Von Bingen}

_{I am enjoying reading the thoughts here. Truly Magnificent! Thank you all for sharing!!}

In response to The Magician's post:

I didn't know that's where the term "survivor" came from, thanks for sharing that with me. It's a term that has come up a few times in the last few weeks too. I was wondering where it came from and what was the intended meaning and I hadn't taken the time yet to look into it but it came to me here. How about that? LoL

"Survivor" makes a lot more sense and I can really appreciate it. It's much better than being labeled or even calling ourselves "victim." The terms we use really do shift our paradigms.

It warms my heart to hear how it's even shifted us collectively.

It's perspectives like this which allow me to see that we really are healing and getting better as a whole. It's so often I hear people say they think things are getting worse and I just don't see it that way, I see things getting better but I can see how they think it's getting worse because that's the beliefs they have and so they are seeing evidence for it.

It would be really something amazing to come up with a method that would allow people to take a look at another paradigm for just a moment so they could see what their fixations are doing to them. It's workshops like this I believe already do that but it takes someone that's not so fixated to even take part in a workshop.

I wonder if we could somehow use virtual reality to help people who are more rigid in their beliefs to give them a glimpse at other realities, see the world through other eyes in a way. Maybe something like that could be useful to some people in helping them expand their mind. I think we are already heading that direction with the type of technology we are creating these days. I can see VR being used to heal people, shift paradigms, and expand their consciousness. 

In response to AlwaysWonderfulPossibilities's post:

I LOVE that quote!!

In response to iZUHM THA iNFiNiTE's post:

We can shift people by placing them into a paradigm that they understand even if they don't operate from it themselves.  My example would be to come up with 3 things you are doing in your life right now that you would not be doing if you were a king...

This shift allows people to see how someone they perceive as having more power than themselves uses power or wields it differently than they do.  Once they are in that space they can start changing their thinking because they can intuitively understand how the thinking would be different.  We will be going into that space shortly so you can understand how to use this process for yourself. 

Sometimes people can more easily see things if it is far removed from themselves because it creates a sense of safety as they start to absorb new possibilities.  People get stuck when they no longer believe there are other possibilities available or even possible.  

Me, I'm always intrigued by possibilities.

Wonderful insights.

In response to The Magician's post:

You know I never thought it could be that simple. Wow! 

I'm looking forward to going forward! This has been a fantastic workshop. 

In response to The Magician's post: 

I was so into what I was reading last Friday that I had made a mental note to share about it here but had forgotten it and my subconscious mind just today reminded me about it...lol. One of the images you posted iz one of the same ones I had used back in August on my Instagram account. Ah, how I sure love synchronicity and it's been one of those synchronicistic days for me so why stifle it now? I love how today it came back to me as I was messaging a friend on here and I had shared with her that I was experiencing a day of many synchronicities and then this memory came back to me so just thought I would share it. 

Andddd...lol...to add a little more synchronicity to it. I, too, had trouble accepting what I was told about Columbus while in the 3rd grade. I actually was sent to the principals office for being "disrupting the class." That's hardly what I was doing but I can see how my teacher thought I was trying to disrupt the class but I simply couldn't accept her explanation as to how could Columbus discover a land which was already discovered by other people. I knew what the word meant because every morning when class first began we had to write in a journal. Our teacher would write a topic on the blackboard (yeah I come from the last generation of the blackboard classrooms...lol) and we could write about that topic or if we didn't want to write in our journals about that topic then we could pick a word from the dictionary and copy the definition. So I had only recently done that with the word "discover" and I knew what it meant and she kept using that word to teach us that Columbus was known for discovering America and that's why we celebrate him. 

This lead to me raising my hand and then asking her how could he possibly discover America if others were here first? Her explanation contradicted what she was teaching us and that didn't make sense to me and I wanted to make sense of this. Mind you, I idolized this teacher. I wasn't intentionally challenging her, what she was teaching confused me a great deal and I just wanted to have a clear understanding which was correct. Black and white thinking on my part but she was the adult I was told that I needed to respect and I did respect her, I loved her, she was my favorite teacher up to that point. While I had some amazing teachers she was the last one I would ever idolize again because she became angry with me when I insisted that her explanation of his discovery contradicts what the Webster dictionary said the words means. She often praised the Webster dictionary so of course I thought of it as the end all on what a word could possibly mean and I was holding her to it. I became frustrated and insisted she help me to understand who he could possibly discover the land which was already inhabited by other people before his arrival. They were people just like him so why did he get so much credit and why was telling me that I needed to accept something as true that obviously wasn't? 

I was very upset with her kicking me out of the classroom and sending me to the office as if I did something wrong. I felt she was punishing me. I never looked at her the same after that. In fact, I never had an adult treat me the way she did after that. While on playground duty she turned her head the other way when a group of kids had pinned me down out on the soccer field and were shoving grass into my mouth. She looked right at me and turned the other way. I even confronted her on it and she flat out denied it. The innocent way I had seen adults at that point melted away and this lead to my not believing everything they had to say on a matter. Some teachers actually appreciated my questions as to asking what their sources were for our text books knowing that their was often another story to what the history, science, and social studies books taught as fact. 

I was elementary school and already I took upon myself to study topics such as racism when we had library day. I was checking out books on social topics that they didn't teach us in the classroom from a book but would tell us only briefly about what was morally right or wrong. I didn't understand racism and didn't like it at all. I had friends that looked very different from me and we were very good friends but it was always the adults who had something negative to say about our being friends. It was the adults in their lives and in my life that had something to negative to say but they couldn't give me any good answers to why they would say the things they did about my friendship with another kid simply because of their own past experiences. My friends were not these people they would warn me about and it was this nonsense that drove me into reading, researching, and studying when I otherwise hated doing that kind of thing for classwork or homework because I usually didn't like the content or purpose of it but was forced to do it anyway. I felt like I was being forced into accepting things as true that even my father would tell me that some of it wasn't true at all. My father was no saint, he was proud of his racist beliefs, and all my uncles and his friends were very vocal about their shared racist beliefs which they would often give me a hard time about but they wouldn't bar me from who I wanted to be friends with, they would simply tell me "you're going to have learn the hard way." I didn't learn the hard way though because the only ones who made it hard on me were those with racist beliefs that had no clue at all on how racism was developed as a social construct and an elementary school student could make them look uneducated which they didn't like at all and would make it out to be as my being disrespectful to my elders. There was a lot of resistance there on my end and theirs. Resistance that was apart of my life well into my 30s before I finally learned how to deactivate a vibration and change the reality of my world. 

It's amazing how all this synchronicity iz playing out for me, through others, through you, through this workshop, through my past and how it relates to my now. I'm just in awe right now. All that was once a very negative troublesome thing for me has been transmuted into something very positive and powerful for me. I wasn't really sure how this workshop would benefit me but I did know without actually knowing that it would be something very liberating and powerful for me and that's exactly how it's playing out. Even the picture and your history has a synchronicity to my life experience, while unique in our experiencing them, there's that ever persistent layer of similarity or oneness iz what I like to refer to it as. 

One of the biggest focuses for me in the last year, if not longer, has been identifying and releasing my limited beliefs so when I had heard of this workshop coming I was thoroughly excited, another synchronicity, that would only accelerate my desire of experiencing a limitless life before leaving this body and experiencing my natural unlimited potentiality, but get a very strong grip on navigating through my life with the ability to select the best possibilities that I could. It's odd but the things that I thought weren't the best possible selections seem to have been after all. While I don't yet fully know if that's what indeed they were it sure feels like it and I'm willing to accept them as such and it allows me to rewrite my past which iz quite powerful to say in the least. The world I once often dreamed of living in as a child iz the reality I'm living in now. I can literally see the vibrations of the old paradigm fading away and the new programming that better serves me in allowing me to live a world that seemed very unreal at one time, almost like a fairy tale, even adults telling me to "keep dreaming kid, that will never be the real world" iz the real world for me. 

It seems that the word "synergy" iz the most appropriate word to describe how this workshop iz working for me. Funny because that's a word I once didn't like very much due to how theologians use it but it makes sense here. I could apply catalyst in how this workshop iz playing out in my experience but synergy just feels more accurate.

It's all so wonderfully interesting, and I just can't deny it, divinely synchronized!

In response to iZUHM THA iNFiNiTE's post:

I so get where you are coming from.  Like you I could see the absurdity of much of what adults were telling me at a young age.  I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut (much safer) and as the years went by I learned not to see, or just to look at what everyone else was seeing.  I shut off my intuition, and soon my creativity and imagination went offline in suit.  It took a rather large personal crisis about 7 years ago for me to say I'm not doing that anymore.  While my perspective is probably not in the mainstream, I would say that I am infinitely happier.  I am much more courageous, adventurous and innovative now.  I no longer accept what I'm told without exploring it for myself.  It seems to me a good time for this type of thinking considering everything that is going on in the world.

Below is a link to a comedian Bill Hicks.  He was much more than a funny guy, many think he was a sort of prophet.  At the very least he saw in a way many others did not at the time.  Sadly he died of cancer in the 1990's.  This is my ultimate favorite of all his bits.  He was an amazingly spiritual person.  He embodied much of what this workshop is about and much of what you just spoke of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgzQuE1pR1w