Resolving the Affirmation Dilemma

(Companion to following post, “Affirmative Truths,” containing a few suggestions of the genre here described)

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Recorded Reading: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ij5rsb8sfne3we/resolving%20the%20affirmation%20dilemma%20.mp3?dl=0

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Resolving the Affirmation Dilemma

Among the vast and rapidly growing global community which contributes to rising human awareness by practicing affirmative thought and hopeful visualization, it has been well established that a stated desire for some cherished outcome — “I wish I had a boat,” for instance — generally works against, rather than for it.

This is because, in the practice of both silent and stated affirmation we are intending to speak to that part of our minds called by the psychologists the subconscious.

Affirmations work because that part of our minds is free-associative and creational, and tends to respond to visualizations in much the same way as it would to outer realities — by generating more of them in our lives, a phenomenon which goes by different names in scientific, spiritual and psychological communities but is well noted by them all.

Affirmations also sometimes tend not to work, however — perhaps due to the fact that the subconscious does not relate well to time, and tends to respond to perception and visualization alike as present reality, creating a cognitive split.

In our example of the desire for a boat, the words, “I wish I had a boat,” are received by these parts of the mind as, “I lack a boat right now, and I’m unhappy about it.” According to theories of affirmative meditation, the results of this will be a continuation and increase of lack, specifically lack of boats, and of unhappiness in general — direct opposites of the goal of the practice.

A commonly recommended method for getting around this hangup is to phrase ones affirmation in the present tense: “I have a beautiful boat, and boy, am I ever happy about it!”

The problem here is obvious. The conscious mind simply sets that stated affirmation side by side with temporal reality, creating outright disbelief. The present fact is that we do not have a boat. That is that.

There is one bridge, the poet believes — a bridge of words — between these two realms, one of which requires a statement made in future tense, and the other instead in the present.

It goes like this:

“I believe it is possible…”

“I believe right now that it is possible for me to have a boat.”

The rest of the recommended steps of cocreation would follow in the order which we are, in our fledgling fifth dimensional way, beginning to understand as effective — the emotional lift of inner visualization, followed by a true acceptance of divine timing in its manifestation, or “letting it go.”

This bridge — if it holds our weight — would be a big step forward for everybody, wouldn’t it?

Shall we all, mmmmm, try it and see?

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Among us, poets are ill paid. In order to continue her work, this one currently lives in her minivan, on an income of a fraction of our nation’s poverty level. If her work has moved, enabled or uplifted you, your contribution to this effort may be made at: https://www.gofundme.com/kx4xka-are-you-a-patron-of-the-arts

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