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Section 5

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Individual Areas

When you have an understanding of and have experienced the freeing up of your virtues in a general sense you can apply the techniques to individual areas of your life. The wonderful truth is that just as the healing of one virtue helps and uplifts all the other virtues, so the healing of one area of your life produces positive changes in every other area of your life.

Let me give you an example. If you heal an activity such as eating food, you will be creating islands of well being throughout your day. Whenever you eat, you will be reminded consciously or unconsciously of the virtues and any tensions and worries about food will be eliminated giving you greater vitality. Your diet will naturally improve and you will digest food more efficiently supporting your health and improving your clarity of mind. You will be less inclined to overindulge or be swayed by misleading advertising, thus saving you money and you will begin to consume more compassionately. You can choose any activity to heal and uplift such as: getting up in the morning, listening to others, walking and dreaming etc etc. As well as activities do not overlook other areas such as your appearance, your body, instincts and emotions etc. Further examples are archetypes such as the Protector, the Teacher and the Lover etc. You will see positive changes not only in the chosen area but, to varying degrees, all other areas too.

Here is a technique for healing a particular area of your life:-

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*Exercise Thirteen: Individual Areas*

Relax the physical body. Relax inwardly. Silently affirm that you are willing to let go of any false beliefs concerning the area. Love and accept yourself and others doing this activity (or experiencing the area) and the activity or area itself. Let go of any attachments or repulsions that you hold about the activity or area. Choose a virtue (ideally one that you appear to be lacking in the area that you are working on) and allow it to infuse /radiate the concept of the activity or area. Visualise all the virtues as one white light cleansing and uplifting the activity.

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Independence!

The semiconscious state is characterised by a false dependency on external conditions. At the moment you may believe that your happiness and peace depend on certain external factors: this is not so. Due to past associations certain qualities within you may only seem able to manifest in certain "favourable"conditions. In actuality these conditions have no power to inhibit or facilitate your positive feelings and virtues, except the power that YOU are pushing onto them. Examples of this inner sickness include: only feeling relaxed when at home, only feeling brave when with friends or only feeling worthy when praised by someone in authority. If you tell yourself that you will be really happy when you win the lottery then you are also telling yourself that you will not (or cannot) be happy until you win the lottery, thus forming a barrier to your happiness now. The next exercise is very effective in weakening and dissolving such false dependencies.

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*Exercise Fourteen: Reclaiming Your Power*

Relax inwardly and outwardly. Choose a feeling or quality that seems dependent on an external person or object. Allow yourself to feel whole and blissful right now, embodying the particular feeling/quality: independent of the external person or object. As you breathe in, take back the responsibility and personal power. As you breathe out let go of all past, present and future blaming. Allow yourself to feel whole and complete, joyful and triumphant as you visualise chains breaking. Do this peacefully and joyfully until the false dependency collapses.

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Summary of Exercise Fourteen: Reclaiming Your Power

In performing this exercise you are associating your breathing process with power, freedom and success. Now whenever you become aware of your breathing, you will get a boost of self esteem and a feeling of control over your life. If you work at these exercises diligently, you will eventually feel at the optimum healthy state constantly, independent of circumstances.

This exercise will help you to view your past from a higher viewpoint. By asserting your personal responsibility many deep-seated resentments will collapse within you. As you are ultimately responsible for yourself so is everyone else: much deep seated guilt and self recrimination will collapse within you. You will feel lighter and brighter as many of your complicated strategies to get attention, protect yourself from imagined slights and subconscious self punishments melt away, revealing a wonderful simplicity that contains all natural and effective strategies in its innocense.

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The Darkness Within

When you have a good understanding of the virtues and trust their natural power within yourself and others, you will be ready to resolve the darker and more difficult miss comprehensions that you may have been harbouring for a very long time.

In the highest sense, all concepts are equal. It is only our ignorance, coloured by past experience, that makes us prefer or detest one concept over another. There are some concepts that humanity as a whole has shunned and pushed to the darkest and most remote corners of their minds. As you know, when a concept is repressed an area of darkness \ semiconsciousness forms where, over time, many foolish beliefs become lodged. Concepts such as suffering, pain, death, loneliness, abandonment and evil etc, etc deeply repulse the average person. This powerful repression takes up a lot of energy on a moment to moment basis and the false beliefs can have a crippling effect on our everyday lives. Because they are particularly abhorrent, or at least seem to be, it takes great bravery and compassion to reintegrate them back into our consciousness. That is why I recommend this exercise only to those who already have a good virtuous base of mind. Reintegration of shunned concepts does not mean that we become attracted to them. Reintegration means that we have reestablished a state of equilibrium with them: we are neither attracted nor repulsed by them. For example: when confronted with hatred, our minds do not then recoil from it and so fall into semiconscious habit, we remain present, absolutely conscious, with all our inner qualities available to deal with the situation in the most appropriate way.

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*Exercise Fifteen: Embracing the Darkness*

Relax inwardly and outwardly. Visualise the unified white light of all the virtues vibrating through every part of you, cleansing, protecting healing and energising you: actually radiating out beyond your physical body, uplifting the atmosphere around you. Choose a concept that is normally shunned such as death, decay or suffering etc. Let go of any false beliefs you may be holding about it. Endeavour to attune to that part of your being which already loves and accepts all concepts equally. Allow your consciousness to penetrate and mingle with the highest and most healthy appreciation of the concept you have chosen to reintegrate. Silently declare that you are willing for your inner and outer life to transform: willing to let go of any misguided notions and habits connected with the concept. Actually see, in your minds eye, the darkness falling away from you as your feelings of bliss and compassion increase.

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Summary of Exercise Fifteen: Embracing the Darkness

If you perform this exercise correctly, you will appreciate that, by shunning concepts in the past, you have been rejecting many qualities within yourself and have viewed reality through a distorted and negative lens. Here are some examples illustrating the importance of integrating the generally shunned concepts back into your consciousness:

Death and decay are natural processes within you. When you withdraw your attention energy from a belief or habit it begins to decay and die. The cells of your body are constantly dying and being replaced by healthy and vigorous new cells. In both these cases and others, the beneficial processes of decay and death can be inhibited and disrupted if the consciousness shuns the corresponding concepts. Furthermore death and decay are inescapable facts of life. By deeply accepting this we will not fall into the trap of becoming too attached to things that by their very nature are transient and fleeting. Such attachment is the cause of suffering.

If we fear failure and shun the concept within us we will tend to not even try and so achieve nothing anyway - wasting opportunities. Or we will strive so hard that all the fun is taken out of our striving, we fall into ruthlessness and then become devastated if our goal eludes us after all. Furthermore every failure contains within it the keys and subtle clues for future success. Thus if we let our minds recoil away from our past failures then we are denying ourselves proper access to the valuable data which they contain.

If we fear rejection and abandonment, we may find ourselves acting against our better judgement merely to pander to those who do not have our best interests at heart. We may feel constrained to the mainstream and feel unable to resist unhealthy traditions or practices because of our deep felt need to feel accepted.

Each of the negative aspects in these examples can be easily resolved by reintegrating the corresponding concepts and applying the other techniques in this book. Can you think of any other examples of benefits arising from reintegrating shunned concepts? If you cannot and you are serious about liberating your vast potential, then you should try hard to come up with some examples of your own: independent and creative thought, along with a healthy curiosity, are all essential characteristics of a successful inner worker.

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Improving Your Practice

The material in this section is indirectly covered in the previous sections but, because of its importance, I have reserved this final section for its study. This section is the last, but you should also see it as the beginning of your REAL study, for that is what it is. When you have studied this chapter carefully and applied yourself to EXERCISE SIXTEEN you should rest for a few days so that your mind can assimilate the changes. Then go back to the start of the book and reread it with fresh eyes, freer from the limitations and prejudices that you carried with you the first time round. You will find a real sense of purpose in your life as every day you achieve greater depths of wholeness and personal security.

To improve your practice you should first become aware of any problems that you have concerning it and then direct your efforts accordingly. For example, if you are afraid to change, you should work on your bravery. If you are disinterested, you should work on your curiosity and if you feel incapable, you should work on your majesty. By doing this, you are actually turning the problem into a stepping stone to success.

At the moment you may see this book as mere entertainment- a distraction from your everyday problems. You may feel that the exercises will only have a slight beneficial effect on you or be holding other limiting ideas about your practice. This book is in tune with that part of your nature that wants the best for you. It is a comprehensive reminder of things that, deep down, you have always known. As you reread this book keep in mind that profound changes for the better are not only possible: they are inevitable as long as you apply yourself to the exercises. To achieve profound inner cleansing and transformation, a great desire and determination are needed as well as skilful means. This book provides the skilful means but you must provide the desire and determination yourself.

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*Exercise Sixteen: Boosting Practice*

Relax physically and inwardly. Allow yourself to feel a real sense of personal freedom, realising that nothing is set in stone and that you have the power to shape your life and control your destiny. Inwardly acknowledge that you are responsible for your experience. Simply let go of all ideas to do with blaming others for your misfortunes. As you breathe in, visualise the personal power that you had previously pushed onto others flowing back into you. As you breathe out, visualise your compassion as light radiating from every part of you, healing and uplifting those in need. Breathe peacefully and easily when doing this exercise without strain or undue effort. Remember to maintain a state of inner and outer relaxation during this exercise. Allow yourself to smile gently as you simply breathe in and out, building up a feeling of well-being and real personal power.

By gently relaxing even more, allow a profound and loving sense of concern for the well being of every part of yourself to support and heighten the good work that you have accomplished.

Focus your attention on the concept of your inner Healer and your inner Liberator. Become aware of their power flowing through you, changing your awareness.

Now allow yourself to embody the concepts of the perfect student and the perfect patient. Let your concepts of being a student and being a patient become one with the white light of the virtues. Visualise the wonderful light transforming and uplifting you in many beneficial ways, making you ready to study effectively in accordance with your highest good.

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Final Word

You may appreciate that this knowledge has profound implications not just for the individual but also for society as a whole. It can remedy just as surely the ills of society on a global scale as it has on the personal scale. It is an antidote to the lopsided views of to days citizen but, perhaps more importantly, it also has a role in inoculating future generations from countless unbalanced views which they may otherwise fall prey to. When this type of information begins, slowly but surely, to inform the policy makers of this world we will see many so called inevitable social problems dissolve away.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to answer you. I believe that this virtue-based inner medicine is an evolving science of great benefit to Humanity. I welcome any insights or contributions you personally have to offer.



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|Contents|
Section 1| Section 2| Section 3| Section 4| |Section 5|

You are here: Home Character Improvement "Inner Medicine"