Page Contents

Fear and Pain    The Fight or Flight Response    Heros    Role Models     Traits    Fantasy

Pretending    Dreams    Goals    Ideals    Assumptions     Viewpoint    Impressions

Spiritual Ascention

Fear and Pain

Nothing affects the imagination like fear and pain. Fear and pain spark the imagination in ways that can last a life time. Think about it. Have you ever been afraid or hurt in a way that you cannot get out of your mind? Do you have fear or pain from your past that are like baggage you carry with you always? All of us do to a greater or lesser degree.

Take a brief moment and meditate on some of the imaginations you have had after being afraid or hurt. Murder, wrath, vengeance, plots, violence, are common in imaginations. If we will perceive all the negative imaginations of all the people in the world happening at the same time, we will begin to realize the concept of an evil force created by humanity itself. We actually act out few of our negative imaginations, but they are there influencing our view point and distorting reality. Though most of us act out few of these imaginations, the fact that we are having them renders us vulnerable to the influence and encouragement of others to do so. This is how negativity spreads as an infectious disease. Other negative people ally with our negativity like a demonic force.

When we create negative images, we constantly sift reality to find signs to reinforce them. We have complexes that are negative imaginations about ourselves that are grouped together. We constantly sift reality for signs to reinforce these. Normal everyday occurrences become symbols to validate our negative imaginations in the form of complexes, unfulfilled desires, disappointments, heart break and other emotional pain, as well as fear of physical pain.

Pain influences every aspect of our negative imagination. From our pretenses, dreams, goals, and ideals, to our heros, role models, and traits, pain creates imaginations that give us the illusion of coping with the hurt and protecting us from future hurt and it is all based on fear.

A farmer I once knew had a huge bull in a field with an old electric fence wire around it. This fence had no electric power to it for years. The bull would not go near this single strand of wire because it had been trained not to touch it as a calf. This training consists of leading the animal into the fence for a shock two or three times. The bull avoided the wire the rest of his life because it had been hurt (severely shocked). The bull formed a subconsciousness program to not touch this wire again.

Our groups of negative imaginations are like this electric fence containing the bull. Each group has a common cause and that is kill, dominate, repel, avoid, based on the fight or flight response initiated by fear. The groups form by similar states of mind caused by our previous fear or pain circumstances. They are encompassed by our negative mind's quest to keep us from similar future pain by focusing on the negative aspects of our environment and by anticipating, through creative imagination, more possible fear or pain.

In our congested world where many of us have little space, we may try to avoid and repel others, but too many times we just don’t have the space. We all can’t dominate, and we certainly can’t kill, so we become irrational with negative thought due, a great many times, to running imaginary skits in our minds over and over called negative emotional response loops by Dr. Frank Young.

The only hope of escaping our past fear and pain, and gaining thought control, is to stop the negative spectrum of thought at its first manifestation, the imagination. At this level we have a struggle free choice in our response to our environment. This entire world of fear and pain influence will have no conscious affect on you when you do. Through consistently choosing the imagery that will create good feelings, we can conquer the negative subconscious mind.

The thought processes evolved within the negative spectrum are illogical. Even when they seem logical they will be manifest illogic in the long term. Fear and pain are the keys that unlock the door to justifying the use of our negative spectrum of imagination, thought and emotion.

We hate because we have been hurt or made afraid. We lust sexually to bring relief to the fear or pain of longing for intimacy or loneliness. We worry in anticipation of fear or pain. We lust riches in the form of wealth and become greedy to bring relief from our fear, pain or misery. We become angry when we are threatened by fear or pain. We become anxious for the fear or pain to stop and depressed when it does not. Our fear of pain is probably our greatest fear.

The Fight or Flight Response

The illogical, inhibited, unable to reason, negative mind relies on the body’s flight or fight response mechanism. This is a highly primitive response which we modern humans rationalize into what we believe is careful thought. Our fears, which initiates this response, cause us to give up the ability to consider the whole of reality in our reasoning, rendering us highly delusional. Positive aspects of the environment become insignificant and are filtered out by the mind. Most of our focus is on the negative aspects of the environment, and there are always lots of things wrong to be found. The negative creative imagination runs amuck sifting reality for potential harm or danger as it so diligently endeavors to protect us. The attacks that initiate the fight or flight response may be as subtle as someone telling us they don’t like our shoes or receiving a glaring look from someone as opposed to legitimate life threatening situations.

Heros

Our choice of heros is critical to the types of ideals, dreams, and goals we create in our

imagination. Through television, movies, books, people we meet, and family members, we form concepts of heros. Positive heros are good role models to pursue, but negative heros are disastrous. Our pain and fear influences us to hold the evil hero in esteem due to the appearance of power they seem to possess which we may hope to protect us and care for us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Role Models

A role model may be a hero or someone we admire. They merely may be someone who is a major influence in our lives, positive or negative. When someone is admired or a major influence, we tend to desire to acquire those traits we admire in them. We desire to be like what we admire so we imagine our self as being like this person. Desiring positive traits to become like our role models is healthy as long as these traits are positive in nature. Admiring the negative traits of role models gives us a false sense of power, false security, false acceptance, and a potentially dark sense of authority. These tendencies are very counter-productive. Pain and fear are major contributors for these negative tendencies also. Environmental negative influences also contribute heavily to these negative imaginations.

Traits can be said to be the physical manifestations of groups of imaginations that form our different view points of which ally with those of our role models. These traits are patterns of behavior and thought, and are symbolic of the imagination patterns a person is experiencing under a wide range of circumstances. They are the distinguishing qualities or characteristics of our personal nature. Analyzing our traits can tell us a lot about our imaginations.

Fantasy

The 60's brought an awareness of fantasies. We then justified much of our pretend world by attributing these thoughts to fantasies. We were informed that everyone has them, they are harmless, meaningless, unless acted out when they are not normal or responsible. These imaginations are much more willful than day dreaming. Adult fantasies were like a psychologically OK’d new toy. We could choke our boss or even plot murder if we were responsible enough to realize these thoughts were mere fantasy and not carry them out. We were of the illusion that negative fantasies of lust, greed, vengeance, violence, and the like were harmless if not acted out. Some psychologists believed this may vent undesirable, bottled up emotion and could be beneficial for blowing off this mental steam. Sexual fantasies were given the OK and people engaged wholeheartedly. Everyone was led to believe that pretending is all right as long as we are responsible and do not hurt anyone. We simply return to reality and the fantasies are gone.

There is a problem with our so called return to reality. We become lost in our imaginations to the extent that reality is greatly affected, distorted, biased, prejudiced, twisted, garbled, misinterpreted, with many factors erased. The imaginations we dwell in set the stage for our view point. This highly affects the paradigm of which we interpret the plot behind the scene. Positive fantasies are healthy while negative fantasies are not. This is spiritual law. You must cleanse your mind of all negative fantasies in order to ascend spiritually. This includes lust. I am sure any twenty one year old reading this will scoff, but preoccupation with sexual fantasies can only lead to frustration to say the least. The same thoughts at the highest degree can lead to murderous rape. It is true that hormonal influences are present, endeavoring to perpetuate life through the sexual act, thereby causing a preoccupation of multiple sexual desires, but discretion is of the utmost importance.

I once read a study where a goat was given a single female to sire in the period of one day. After the initial sexual response, the male was no longer interested in that particular female. The next day this same goat was given a new female after each copulation until the total reached seventeen. This study was done to illustrate the inborn desire of a male mammal to reproduce with as many females as possible. This hormonal urge in a human male is to some degree prevalent, but need not prevail. When we consider that one of the purposes of spirituality is to overcome the desires of the flesh these sexual fantasies can be rebuked for the sake of spiritual ascension.

I am not implying there is anything wrong with sex, but unscrutinized it is a major distraction to spiritual ascension. Lust diminishes the character and creeps into our relationships with others being counter-productive and disruptive. It is probably one of the hardest negative thought patterns to conquer because it is genetically encoded in our physical makeup.

Pretending

When we are children we use our imaginations to pretend. Children pretend they are any place or with anyone they desire. As we mature we are taught that we should stop living in our imaginations because this world is not reality. But we never stop using our imaginations. We believe that we stop pretending. We do not. We merely progress to new realms of imaginations, such as day dreaming, and all the images we create attempting to figure the plot behind the scenes of the play. To justify this pretending as we did as children we succumb to the notion that we may daydream, but we are not wilfully pretending. This is merely a lack of concentration or a pleasant thought to take a brake from reality. It is natural to have pretenses of attaining our goals, wants, needs, expectations, ideals. We feel our pretenses are more mature thoughts when they come in these fashions. We do this thoughtlessly, inadvertently, with no regard to pretension. We are taught to control our emotions, but we assume the imagination is well under control because we are not willfully and knowingly pretending in the same style as we did in our earlier years of life.

Pretentious positive imaginations are healthy as long as their preoccupation does not interfere with life obligations. Day dreamers usually are reprimanded. A tremendous amount of good has manifested into this world from the positive imaginations we have that may start early in our youth. I cannot elaborate enough that all positive emotions are the result of positive imaginations or images within the mind. On the other hand, the imaginations while pretending or day dreaming in the negative spectrum are very unhealthy. They are counter-productive and expand into mental disturbances.

Dreams

Our dreams, and I am referring to the dreams of the awake mind, start to form in our positive imaginations at an early age. As children we have simple dreams. We dream of being given an ice cream cone or going to grandma's. As we mature we have more sophisticated dreams. We start to speculate our profession or career, the kind of life we ideally wish to live, commonly referred to, here in The United States, as "The Great American Dream." We see our self in a nice home, with a nice car, with a desirable husband or wife, a good job and the likes. We form imaginations of what we would like our personality to be like based on our heroes, those who we admire, and doing what interests us. We also desire to live the life styles of these people. We have perceptions of these role models. Everything is fine and healthy as long as these imaginations are positive.

As we experience the pains and fears of life, whether they are physical or emotional, our negative imaginations are born from these negativities instilled in us. Aside from accidental injury, emotional pain, having our feelings hurt with ridicule, disappointment, angry or hateful criticisms, fears and anxieties, all creep into our lives through the negativity of others causing our negative imagination thought processes to form. The vividity of imagination and sensitivity to pain and fear are major contributing factors to the viewpoints these imaginations form.

Good positive dreams are the foundation of the world in which we live. While on the other hand, the world is abased with the dreams of negative imaginations. People acting out the animal urge of dominance dream of power, money, sexual fulfillment through multiple partners, will attempt to realize these dreams at the expense of almost anyone in the way. People having negative dreams have little of a conscience regarding their fellow human beings. A conscience is developed by the positive spectrum of thought. Since the negative spectrum of imagination is beastly by nature, it is not bound by the considerations of what is right and wrong.

Goals are the more analytical imaginations of which we create that are the results of intentions or a purpose. They are more calculating and sound. Goals are the shorter term stepping stones to our dreams. We can have moment to moment goals, daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, yearly goals. As we create the images of our goals time after time, these images sink into the subconscious mind where programs are developed to transform consistent images into reality.

Good sound positive goals are sound and productive imaginations manifesting into the physical world. Negative goals are comparable to demonic plots.

Ideals

Ideals are hope of the ultimate realization of our goals and dreams. We are usually willing to accept less than our ideals, but hope to attain them. Special care needs to be taken in choosing ideals. We base our dreams on our ideals in the same respect as our goals are based on our dreams.

Assumptions

We have created the images of ideals, dreams, goals, heros, role models, and acquired traits. We fill our memory banks with knowledge in the form of schooling or verbal data. We also form many assumptions. These are groups of imaginations, positive or negative, of which we use to hypothesize or conclude. When positive, an assumption can be creative intelligence, but when negative an assumption is harmful. Negative assumptions manifest into the personality, and mainly influence our ability to process information about ourselves, others, and circumstances with consideration to the whole of reality.

The play on words, "when you assume, you make an [ass] of [u] and [me]," epitomizes what our negative assumptions are capable of. In the same way positive assumption is a creative imaginary process where we project knowledge and therefore create new knowledge and teach ourselves. Negative assumptions reassign the intentions of others, usually giving them an evil purpose, and interfere with our interaction with life in many subtle ways. They are conclusions drawn based on a lack of consideration.

Inasmuch as the positive analytical part of our mind will calculate from a wide consideration of facts stored in the memory banks, the negative analytical mind will not make this consideration, but will instead permit groups of imaginations to search and sift the facts of reality for validations of the preconceived notion that formed the groups initially. From this perspective we can perceive that negative thoughts create parasite-like formations of images in the mind. This is why the ability to reason, when in a negative state of mind, is greatly inhibited.

Viewpoint

The negative imaginations within a person's mind that form the paradigms and perceptions related directly to fears, superstitions, traditions, pain, hurt, preconceived notions, and assumptions, influenced by varying other negativities set the stage for our negative viewpoint. Our positive viewpoint is the sum of images created by our positive experiences, analytical conclusions of the full scope of reality, and creative wisdom, influenced by varying other positive attributes, less that margin for error, ignorance.

Viewpoint is made of a blend of positive viewpoint handicapped by negative viewpoint. We can see this in many people. A highly educated professor may feel superstitious of picking up a coin on tails. It seems no amount of education, other than spiritual education, can eliminate negative thought. Our world's most intelligent minds still suffer from negativities. These negative thoughts, in the mentioned forms, open the possibility of reality being viewed from any perspective of a 360 degree circle of viewpoint. An enlightened viewpoint of reality, in contrast, encompasses an awareness of the entire 360 circle of possible viewpoints. This is attained by giving as much consideration to all facts of reality to the extent that is humanly possible without influence from the negative mind. The influence from the negative mind causes many deletions of facts rendering our reality a conclusion that is greatly or partially incomplete due to this lack of considerations.

One can see the same thing as always, but our viewpoint changes. Older people look old until we become older, then older does not look as old. Everyone looks at life a little differently, in a unique way, according to their personality, wisdom, perceptions, state of mind, conditioning, negativity, and countless other factors such as preconceived notions. When we look back ten or twenty years, we see the viewpoint of that era in the way of what was fashionable and modern, yet today these fashions and yesterday’s modern concepts are outdated.

Anthony Robins, in his bestseller, Ultimate Power, describes viewpoints of situations as framing. The way we frame something is the view point we take regarding a particular event, circumstance person, place or thing.

Shankaracharya, a guru I see in Nashville and author of God Alone Is, explains this as "The color of the glasses we wear." If you wear red glasses, everything looks red, green glasses make everything look green. If we move our view point to find the silver lining in the cloud, we are re-framing or changing our glasses. Is the cup half full or half empty?

Preconceived notions greatly influence our view point. A waitress may see many coffee cups left half empty, but fill them with gold dust and they would become half full of gold.

Psychologists term this as schema, a cognitive framework consisting of a number of organized ideas; a frame of reference for recording events or information.

To ascend spiritually one must make a great change in viewpoint toward spirituality. I like to imagine that everyone of us is one of God's angels put here on Earth to learn lessons by having the human experience. When we overcome the flesh we will begin to "earn our wings." Now, when I look at the world, I see angels everywhere. Of course, most people do not know it yet and commit many sins and errors. It’s a good viewpoint. It works for me. It creates endless possibilities of understanding, compassion, and mercy. I am not saying that we all should believe this, but something in this ball park would not hurt. Rather than thinking we are a human endeavoring for a divine experience, the thought that we are a divine being having a human experience is the desired paradigm. The point is that my world is a world of angels. And I am trying to help remove the veil of ignorance (negativity) from those who would let me. Sometimes I feel like an angel when the spirit is moving me and I am really helping someone. Our positive attributes are angelic. I am not trying to be self exalting, but it is a great way to feel and things are in perspective when humility is prevalent.

Impressions

Spiritual Ascension

When we ascend spiritually enlightenment is achieved when we overcome our negative imaginations to the extent that the consciousness spends little time dwelling in the negative spectrum of thought. Notice I stated little time. This is because thoughts will always come into the mind, but we must control them by rebuking the negative thoughts. In order to ascend spiritually we must be able to analyze our negative imaginations and be aware of the percentage of negativity within our essence. This may very difficult to do alone. Ask your friends and family to tell you about your negative self. They all know and probably are negative enough themselves to already have engaged in gossip of your negativities.

We all have judged someone as not being in reality. The truth is that we create our own realities within our imaginations to the point that reality begins to loose its relevance. The intentions and motives we assign and assume others have in regard to their actions, the judgements of others, and our lack of consideration for the whole of reality, cause the real scope of the big picture to become lost. Sometimes we are accurate, sometimes we could not be further from the truth. Therefore, a great part of reality becomes an assumption. The assumption is based on what we believe. We believe imaginations by sifting reality for validations. We are deluded by the validations we believe we find that justify our negative imaginations and seem logical. It can even seem logical to be illogical, but as long as it justifies our emotional urges, we go with the thoughts.