Bestselling Author and Researcher Dr. Joe Dispenza said that we think about 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day. 90% of our thoughts are the same thoughts. How you think, feel, and act is called your personality. He said your personality equates to your personal reality. That makes sense.
Dr. Joe Dispenza said that in order to change your personal reality, you have to change your personality. You have to think about what you’re thinking and change it. You have to be aware of your unconscious thoughts and modify them. Eventually, you have look at the emotions that keep you anchored in the past and decide what emotions belong in your future. So basically, you recreate yourself. That’s not easy, anyway.
When we’re anchored in the past, then the past is in our present, and in our future. We repeat the past over, and over, and over again. Thought leader Werner Erhard said that’s our already always future, because it has that already always feeling and familiarity in it.
Werner Erhard said that we choose who we are going to be in any given moment. When we get that we choose, then making a difference becomes our most authentic self-expression. Werner said that the only meaning in life is the meaning that we give it. Are you going to give life, good meaning or bad meaning? I’m just asking.
According to Dr. Joe Dispenza and Werner Erhard, our past becomes our present and becomes our future. I believe they would agree that we only have the present. The present, now is all that we have. I think we often blur the past, present, and future together. Usually, the effect sucks.
I really don’t know how to think about what I’m thinking and change that or be aware of my unconscious thoughts and modify them. That’s so theoretical, if not just plain complicated. I like simple. Although simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. I practiced that kind of awareness and presence in over 35 years of Aikido training.
In Aikido, I practice mushin, the empty mind or no mind. I can only create from nothing, from mushin. Mushin sources mastery in any discipline. Creation and invention comes from nothing. In jyuwaza training, multiple people attack me. I throw the attackers using various Aikido techniques like kotegaeshi (wristlock) or yoko-iriminage (strike to the side of the head). I don’t oppose the attack. I invite the attack. If I defend, I can be defeated. I match their attack in my attack, in awase.
If I think about what technique I’m going to use, I’m dead. Although figuratively, not literally. This is training. Still, I train like it’s life or death. The late Mizukami Sensei taught me to have no preconceived notions in the attack. I create my technique from whatever the attacker gives me. There is no past, no future. I’m present in the moment. I create my technique in the moment. I recreate myself in the moment, too. Just train.
We all have emotions that anchor us in the past. I know, I do. When I was 8 years old, Dad scared the hell out of me. Whatever I did or didn’t do only got him so angry with me. I was not the son that he wanted. I was not good enough for Dad, never would be. I would never be good enough for anyone, including me. I spent much of my adult life, proving that I was good enough, that I was good enough to be loved. I suffered.
In the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, there will always be suffering in life. We all get that truth. The Fourth Noble Truth of Buddhism is the path to end suffering. On the path to end suffering, I trained in Aikido with the late Mizukami Sensei and Ishibashi Sensei, and worked with my therapist Lance Miller.
Ishibashi Sensei said, “The purpose of Aikido is to release your fear.” He said, “The safest place to be under the attack, in the danger.” When the bigger stronger man attacks, I wait it out, and enter the attack. I take a glancing blow if I have to. I’m not always going to get away scot-free. It’s one time.
In the center of the attack, in the danger, I make my distance, create my timing. I apply the Aikido technique to myself, not to the attacker. O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba said, “True victory is victory over oneself.” It’s me against me.
Under the attack, in the danger, I let go my fear inside that I’m not good enough. My fear of Dad when I was a little boy. My emotions anchored in the past. Although my fear inside never completely disappears, every time I enter what I fear, I let go more of my fear inside. I free myself. I recreate me.
I work with my therapist Lance Miller to heal my childhood trauma and depression. I forgive Dad for not knowing how to be a father, for being afraid inside too, and for being imperfectly human. I forgive myself for not being strong enough as a little boy to stand up to Dad and protect Mom. I forgive myself for being imperfectly human, too. I love myself for who I am and forgive myself for who I’m not. I recreate myself.
Maybe, you can recreate yourself by thinking about your thoughts, unconscious or not, and change and modify them. Maybe, you can discard those emotions that anchor you in the past. That all sounds good in theory, on paper. Still, I like simple. I let it go to recreate me. I give up being right and making others wrong. I don’t make Dad wrong for my fear inside me. I give up that it’s all Dad’s fault, too. I let go of my fear inside me. No one else can. No one is to blame. That’s all on me.
I could be right and make others wrong, and take that to my grave. That makes no fucking difference at all. I would have had a life that sucked. Instead, I let it go. I love and forgive myself. That’s all on me. I work on myself, not on others. That’s all I can do. That’s all that we can do.
The hardest things that I do in life are let it go and forgive. When I let it go, I free me. I’m free to be me. When I forgive, that’s more for the forgiver than the forgiven. I heal me.
I let it go. I forgive. I’m quiet inside. I can be happy inside. I have a meaningful life.
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Photo by Armands Brants on Unsplash
