The Power Within

I have heard and read that we have the power within us to create anything in our experience that we desire. What we create in our experience is our choice, which is usually made unconsciously but can be made consciously. I understand the concept and agree with the premise, but there's a big difference between understanding and realizing.

Realize means to make real. It's the feeling part of understanding, or knowing that we know. My experience has been that I have to get to that deep, inner knowing and then I will live according to my understanding, consciously.

Like most people, my life has been filled with all kinds of "evidence" that we are victims of fate, chance, and circumstances beyond our control. Intellectually, I know that these old beliefs are not true, but I still experience their effects to some degree. How then do I get to the point of knowing that I know and fully realizing that I choose and create what I experience? I read somewhere that a belief is simply a thought that has been thought enough times or long enough to be accepted as truth. If that's true, then I need only replace my false beliefs with new beliefs and keep thinking on the new beliefs until they become my reality. It sounds too simple.

Even if it is that simple, it's going to take time. My false beliefs didn't become ingrained in me overnight. I think the first step is choosing what I want to believe and getting really clear on that. I did an exercise in which I wrote down everything that I believe as true and then questioned all those beliefs. Some of them were clearly false and it was easy to see where they came from. Some, not so much! It took doing this exercise a few times to get all my beliefs written down. So many of them were not things that I ever think about consciously.

I challenged every one of my beliefs and looked for the experience that started them. Most of them came from childhood and were passed on from my parents. Not everything my parents taught me was false, and some of the false things were told to me to keep me safe. I don't fault my parents for teaching me limitation because I know they were doing the best they could with what they knew. I'm not a child anymore though, so its time to choose my own beliefs.

There are more things that I question now than what I accept as definitely true. I am making new choices about what I believe and my life has changed drastically. I've changed. I never really was the person I thought I was, but I believed the illusion so I lived the illusion. It's time for me to take this understanding to the next level and live more of my life consciously. Being present in each moment is helping me do that.