Attitude and Effort

In my previous post I talked about people who have a deeply held belief that they must work hard or struggle to get anywhere.  I've seen this attitude adopted in so many aspects of peoples' lives from financial success and gaining of material possessions to the belief that one needs to suffer to achieve enlightenment.

Where does this attitude come from?

The only answer I have for this one is that during upbringing many of us are told that we must work hard, study hard and really try to succeed at whatever we do.  Our society has a habit of turning any endeavour into a competition against everyone else that only one person can win.

While creating abundance, gaining enlightenment, financial success or whatever goal it is we're striving for, the more we seem to try to make it happen, the more effort and struggle we place in reaching that goal the more we seem to block ourselves off from other possibilities that may lead us to the same goal, opportunities we may not have seen before or even worse, block us completely from achieving that goal because we believe that it's a struggle to achieve.

I said it in my previous post as well, and I will re-iterate and expand the point here, just as a mother has the compulsive desire to protect, feed and nurture her offspring the cosmic, the Divine or God, Mother Earth or however we chose to perceive her has the compulsive desire to provide for us everything we could need for our complete physical, emotional and spiritual development.

How can we break such an attitude?

This is a process that I believe is deeply personal, different for each of us and dependant on our desire to change our lives and charge our energy for positive creation, peace and love.

My personal journey involved a period of time where through circumstance I abandoned almost all of my physical possessions and travelled around staying where I could with friends and family.  This really altered my perspective of the world around me and the things that were important to me.   Before this period of time I had worked full time for close to 10 years, earning a very reasonable income and lived very comfortably surrounding myself with everything I thought I wanted - it took me along time to realise that none of it was making me happy at all.

I'm certainly not suggesting that this is the path for everyone, it was hard at times, but so very rewarding in hindsight.

Alternatively through self-knowledge and awareness you may be able to identify the restraints and attitudes that are blocking abundance in your life, meditate upon them, identify with them and re-integrate them in a positive way - something that deserves a whole article unto itself. 

Negativity

Negativity by it's very nature is in opposition to positive, constructive creation.   When we are focusing our energy on endeavours such as vengeance or retribution, pay back, hatred, cruelty and violence we open ourselves up to receiving only that energy back.  It is through opening our hearts, forgiveness and love that we are able to build the energy to work harmoniously with the universe to create abundance in our lives.

Changing "negative" attitudes can be difficult, especially as many of us believe they we are  justified in these feelings.  We fail to see the destructive nature of these feelings and of actions we perform as a result of them.

Being conscious of the pattern, identifying where one is creating this kind of energy around them and by regularly consciously adopting a more constructive and positive attitude the practice will eventually become second nature.

The cosmic can only try to give us everything we need, it is up to each of us to decide to accept it, be open to it and receive the full abundance the cosmic has to offer.   If our actions and thoughts reflect those of  hatred, cruelty, violence, vengeance and revenge then these are all that we will open ourselves to receive from the cosmic.

In writing this article I was inspired to post to my Daily Reflections blog a youtube video of  Roger Glover's Love is All - a fantastic song and something most Australians my age will remember from weekday afternoon kids television on the ABC - enjoy.

Peace & Love.