34. How the past becomes prologue

NOTE: This is an excerpt from the book The Least You Should Know About Life.

It now becomes clear that before you can take complete control over your mind, you must free your mind from the imperfections created in both this lifetime and all previous lifetimes. While this might seem like an overwhelming task, it need not be when you understand what is required. There are two main elements involved.

Imperfect beliefs
You have allowed certain imperfect beliefs to enter the four levels of your mind. Some of these beliefs have entered in this lifetime, but others might have been there for a very long time. This can make it difficult to see the fallacy of such beliefs because they have become so familiar that you do not see anything wrong with them or you think your life could not be any different. For example, many people truly believe they are human beings and that their minds have no power to influence matter.

It now becomes clear that the four levels of your mind have a short-term and a long-term component. The short-term component is what you have created specifically for this lifetime. Here is how this affects the four levels of your mind:

• You have a particular sense of identity based on your family background, nationality, ethnicity, sex etc. This short-term identity obviously will not be carried over into the next lifetime. Instead, you have created a more general sense of identity that you do carry from lifetime to lifetime. Ideally, this long-term identity should be based on the spiritual individuality anchored in your I AM Presence. Yet it is possible to create a sense of identity that is almost exclusively based on the belief systems in this world or what you see through the senses. You might have forgotten your spiritual identity and have created an identity as a material, human being or as a miserable sinner. Thus, you might have a sense of low self-esteem that goes back many lifetimes.

• Your mental body contains certain erroneous beliefs about what is an acceptable way to express your creativity or fulfill your desires. For example, you might have accepted beliefs that undermine your ability to see or your willingness to follow the spiritual laws. One obvious example is the belief that the ends can justify the means, a philosophy that has numerous versions and has been used to “justify” the worst human atrocities. Such false beliefs make it possible for people to kill in the name of God, even though their religion gives the command, “Thou shallt not kill!”

• Your emotional body might contain certain beliefs about how to express feelings, for example that it is acceptable or unavoidable that you respond with anger when you don’t get your way. Your emotional body is likely to have been scarred by traumatic situations in which you generated massive amounts of negative emotional energy. It is even possible that severe trauma can cause a fracture or division in your psyche that can account for severe mental illnesses, such as depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disease.

• At the level of the conscious mind, you might have certain beliefs about what is acceptable behavior in this world. You might have beliefs about the acceptable or the only way to respond to certain situations. Some of these responses even come from the physical body, which has certain reactions programmed into the brain and nervous system. One example is the flight or fight response that is seen in all animals and is designed to generate a very quick response for securing the survival of the body. If an animal feels threatened, its first impulse is to run away, but if that is not possible, it will fight the threat. Many humans obviously respond this way to life, but you do have the potential to rise above this animalistic reaction. That is why Jesus told people to turn the other cheek instead of striking back. Obviously, your brain also has certain drives related to the physical body encoded into it, and this causes some people to live their entire lives in pursuit of bodily pleasures.

It is worth noticing that it is quite possible that you could have a conflict between beliefs in the long-term portion of your mind and the short-term portion specific to this lifetime. For example, you might have been brought up in a religious family in this lifetime and have been brought up to believe that stealing is a sin. Yet from past lifetimes you have a belief that steeling is acceptable, which can override your short-term beliefs. Obviously, such conflicts can create a division in your psyche that can give rise to much confusion and suffering.

When you purify your four lower bodies from imperfect beliefs, you will overcome such inner conflicts. You will reconnect to your spiritual individuality and to the positive aspects of the long-term identity built in this world. Your identity body will then reflect your spiritual identity, your thoughts will follow your deepest inner knowing and your feelings will stay within the framework of your thoughts, whereby your actions will always be life-supporting. This will give you the most coveted of all qualities, namely peace of mind that comes from an inner sense of spiritual wholeness.

Misqualified energy
The second element from your past is misqualified energy, also called karma. Many people are aware of karma but often think it is generated only through actions. Yet karma is misqualified energy, and as has been shown, your thoughts and feelings are forms of energy. It is therefore possible to generate karma through your thoughts and feelings. If you feel hatred toward another person, you will misqualify energy and generate karma. Yet the karma is not as severe as if you commit physical violence against the other person. Karma can take two forms:

• There is karma that is the result of thoughts, feelings or actions directed toward other people, even animals or the environment. This karma forms an energy impulse that is sent out into the space-time continuum, the cosmic mirror. In due time, it will be returned to you, in many cases in a future lifetime. When it does return, it has much the same effect as described earlier, namely selecting either the best or the worst outcome of a situation.
  If a situation has ten possible outcomes, a returning portion of negative karma from a past life can make the worst possible potential become an actual event. That is why people who live a perfectly good life can still experience misfortune. It is the result of returning karma from a past lifetime in which they did not live a good life. Obviously, there can also be good karma, which can explain why people who do not live a good life can still experience positive events.

• There is karma that is the result of thoughts, feelings and actions directed against yourself. This karma forms an energy impulse that is not sent out into the universe but stays within your own mind. If the impulse is positive, it will rise to the level of your causal body and become your treasure laid up in heaven. If it is a negative impulse, it will be stored in your long-term mind, and from there it will affect you for the rest of this lifetime and in future lifetimes.
  
  Obviously, such energy could have accumulated over many lifetimes, which explains why some people are predisposed to respond in certain ways, for example with anger. These people have accumulated so much anger energy that it overwhelms their emotions, and their conscious minds are not strong enough to overcome the magnetic pull of the misqualified energy. They lose control and are blinded by anger.

35. Why you can never get away with anything

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Copyright © 2008 by Kim Michaels