Changing your life: Letting go of the old ways

Many of us want to change but it is rather too much to ask for if we want it to be easy. There is a typical process that change goes through that is completely natural even though at first glance it may seem to fly in the face of the law of attraction.

I myself went through a long period of life in which I was held steadfast in the clutches of a particular philosophy. Each philosophy has its own thing to offer but when I say I was held steadfast I mean that it was where I put all my energy. I was “a fan” in a way and did what I could to have the world fit in to this way of thinking. Later came a point in which it was time to move on to something else in order to keep evolving and I actually got sick and tired of the old ways. I started to hate it. The old way of thinking bugged me and irritated me to high heaven. I was going through a kind of rejection period in order to put some distance between the old way of thinking and what was to come in its place but now I want to introduce the conflict with the law of attraction: What you resist persists. The reason that what you resist persists, is that you are still pouring your energy into that which you resist and as the saying goes; “Where your attention goes, your energy flows” and I think there is a lot of truth in those words. I will make this more concrete. My old life was characterized by poverty, a belief that the rich were evil money grabbers who pulled food out of the mouths of the poor. That meant of course that the poor were somehow good for being poor. Poverty as a virtue was an unconscious belief that I defended with a vengeance.

As I started to meet more and more people on both sides (evil poor people and good rich people) that contradicted this belief, I felt the foundations of this belief start to crumble, but like the last rat to leave the sinking ship, I refused to accept the inevitable. The belief became impossible to hold onto any longer and I started to embrace a belief that I heard a million times in self help programs and books. The belief was “My creative actions attract great wealth”. As I took on board this new belief, only in a seed-like form at first, I started to find examples of the truth it held. At the same time the old belief was not giving up easily. Seemingly angry at me for its abandonment, it clung to my consciousness in a realm of angry emotions. I distanced myself from my past in a radical way wanting nothing to do with who I called “losers” and “unfortunates”. I looked through my music collection and found many an example of people trying to make their poverty cool, many examples of “us versus them” mentality with “us” meaning the poor repressed class. I took a close look at the places I used to go and found criminals and unfortunates. Now I could have just turned the page and moved on to greater things, but the desire to hate my old life was too great a temptation to resist. I deleted every last song from my i-pod and threw the poverty lovers out of my life, I resisted those places and those people with a passion. The result of this was that the energy of those things was still around me, but I did not despair. Years before I had read Nietzsche and he spoke of this process at the beginning of his “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. The chapter was “OF the three metamorphosis of the soul” and spoke of a great change. The first stage was the camel, the second was the lion and the third was the child. Let’s look at each within the context of my own transformation. Firstly the camel is a weight bearing creature. This is as you start to become aware that you are carrying a load. The load in my case was one of poverty, and the realization that I was justifying my poverty and so in deed were the people around me. I realized that I was bearing a loser’s mentality like a good camel. The weight of this burden became heavier by the minute. I was ready to break. The one who is needed to break this is the lion: the creature of destruction. The lion is the rebel, the force of destruction and the path clearing force that makes the way for the new way. The lion in itself is not creative but without him, no new way will become clear. After the lion has made a vacuum, there is space for the child. Devoid of anger, the child is nothing but the new birth. All the energy of the child is upon its growth. So my poverty hating was simply the lion doing its thing. After much flapping and struggling, the hate for the old way starts to subside as you realize that it is simply another form of the energy of life. The old ways are simply things that you go through and when it is time to stop going through these things you simply choose to do so. You then become completely free to grow again and your energy is not tempted back anymore. You energy can be purely focused upon what you want o be, how you want to live, the person you have decided to be in every way.
So I let all that hate go. Sometimes it pops up in little ways but when it does I just pay it the due attention and let it go. I know that it is nothing more than an essential part of the growth process.