Empowerment for the Willing Mind

Many times we find ourselves completely powerless, even when we've spent the previous two weeks on an emotional high, where we felt certain this times things are going to be different. How is it that we can get so excited about something and then not follow through with the actions or changes we were determined to make?
We often find this process repeating itself as it creates a cycle of pain and guilt. To some this cycle happens annually, to others it seems to be monthly. For me, this cycle used to illustrate the context of my life; constantly getting excited about change, then seeing myself fall into what seems to have been a puddle of guilt awaiting my failure.
Frustration to the max, led to depression and hopelessness. At times I truly felt like giving up and ending what seemed to have been a pointless existence.

Motivation to Empowerment:
Advancing from a place of Motivation into the world of Empowerment can serve not only to create consistent action, but assist in the creation of a meaningful and purposeful life. Empowerment is an expansion of Motivation. Empowerment lives in a place of truth, while Motivation exists only as a temporary emotional high. Allow me to define these two words as I continue.

Empowerment: An inner knowing or belief that inspires one to see things differently, which results in acting in a manner that leads towards more oneness on a consistent basis.
Motivation: A temporary emotional sensation that leads to temporary action.

These are my definitions. I've defined them from my past and current experiences. You may not agree with them, but that is not the point. The point is to understand how I am using the words so this article can be understood more completely.

Motivation:
Motivation is something we have all experienced. We have all been in the place where we were inspired to make change. With that moment of inspiration we became motivated to move forward. There is a difference between inspired and motivated; inspired is the sense of connectedness we feel when we realize things can be different, the motivation is the excitement and emotional high that engages us to take initial action. The value in motivation is its launch pad effect. The push to move forward and begin our walk on new ground.
The problem occurs when we rely solely on this idea of motivation to keep us going; doing so only proves the point that motivation is temporary. This emotional sensation will dissipate as time goes on and if we are not prepared, our actions will dissipate as well. Sometimes resulting in complete loss of the momentum we originally created, further more resulting in guilt, pain, and confusion.

Example:
I've attended quite a few motivational events and seminars over the past 5 years or so, and what I've discovered for myself is that my experience has been consistent with the majority others who attended the same ones.
Let say that you attend a paid seminar where its focus is to show you how to make a Billion dollars in one year, (yes, it is an exaggeration). You get inspired, then you begin a path towards motivation which leads you to invest $5,000 to learn more and get the real secrets. (Yes, people will manipulate your emotions for their own financial gain, get over it.) Its this emotional high from motivation that highly influences your decision to invest money, it wasn't the inspiration. The inspiration was the realization that things could be different and you could do something about it, an idea of oneness.
We invest this money and receive our 40 dvd set and are on our way. Whether we have additional support or not isn't the point. As we move forward, two weeks go by and our enthusiasm begins to wane. The initial emotional sensation is losing its power and we find ourselves not making genuine progress. This process sometimes takes days or it can last a month or more, the key component is that over time there is no measurable result.
Now we are in a place of guilt and pain because we've invested $5,000 and are beginning to realize that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. It's not that we were wrong or right in our decision, that part is irrelevant, the significant element is did we learn anything to create a better result next time.
Another example: its like going to church every Sunday and getting excited about change but loosing my steam by Wednesday; then by Sunday I was dragging my feet back into church for another dose of superficial motivation. Ooohhh was that too harsh? I would go and get this emotional high, which ultimately resulted in guilt for not living up to the standard that I thought – or someone else thought was right for my life.
Does this pattern seem to play out in your life as well? Where you get all excited about something, then it doesn't pan out or you don't follow through, which breeds guilt and pain? If it does, I totally understand what you're going through. We can be buddies now :)
For me, I had to learn that making progress wasn't about being motivated and constantly experiencing emotional ecstasy. It was about something deeper, something that involved discovering my core nature and who I really was. I needed to be able to see truth before I moved forward, not some hype about what someone else thought I could do, because what I found out is that hype resulted in them staying in business. If it wasn't hype, it was fear; some factor to scare me into participation, basically saying – if you don't, then you suck. If you don't, there's some impending doom awaiting you and your family. I've began to release these ideas of fear and hype and it has served my growth tremendously.

Empowerment:
I believe an appropriate description of being empowered is moving forward with ease and beauty; creative elegance. Empowerment is an effect that takes place inward. Empowerment, is not created by someone or something exterior to your being. Empowerment can only be created by you.
We need to understand that our physical 3D experience is a direct reflection of how we think and how we chose to interpret what enters our senses. Most of us believe that life is reactive and what you see is what you get. Some of us have advanced our awareness and have found that we are part of the creation process. Others have gone even further to believe they are the sole creator of what they experience in their 3D reality. The point is to not debate who is wrong or right, its to determine whats right for you and your current path.
To enter the world of Empowerment we must learn to go inward and change the beliefs and interpretations we hold for ourselves and the world around us; this is the journey of creative discovery. When we do this, over time we begin to learn more of who we truly are which leads to consistent action.
Empowerment is the discovery of the oneness within ourselves. As this oneness begins to unfold within us, we can truly begin to see the limitless nature of all that is. As we identify with this nature, our actions become second nature and begin creating the desired results within this physical plane of existence.

Personal Example:
I believe ultimately life is meant to be lived without physical boundaries, whether or not we actually obtain that level of living is up to the one who experiences life. The goal would be to increase or expand our current reality so it falls more in alignment with a limitless world. It's been my experience that the limits we run into are only created by our belief they are there.
This example is the short version of how I reclaimed my health and well being through being empowered.
I knew that I wanted to make changes with concern to the food I was putting into my body. I used to be the guy that would never turn down the opportunity to fire up the grill and engage in an aggressive grilling session which consisted of some mean country style ribs covered in southern style BBQ sauce. You never had to put me on a leash to go down and get a double Texas Whopper with cheese. Even at home, the amount of food I consumed for dinner could have fed 3 dogs, 4 cats, and the neighborhood raccoon. It seemed as though I was constantly eating unhealthy foods.
I had my awesome moments of motivation, promising never to engage in such eating habits again and getting my fluffy ace' back into the gym. These moments were all too often. It seemed every other month I was making some new life long commitment to change my habits, only resulting in a cycle of pain and guilt. These attempts would last a few weeks and then fizzle out leaving me worse off than before. Dare I say, even to the point of being almost 300 pounds; 278 to be exact. I've got a large frame by design, but even for me, closing in on 300 pounds was gettin' kinda ridiculous.
At the time I couldn't understand why I had such are hard time with this concept of self control. Diet was probably my biggest challenge, my eating was mostly emotional and I was a sucker for the fast food dollar menu.
As I searched within myself, and discovered ideas of oneness, my beliefs and interpretations began to change. I started to realize I am not my body; if I was, then I would be separate from everyone else and that would go against what I knew to be true. If I wasn't my body, then what was my body. I embarked on a new discovery of how I viewed this flesh box, which offered empowerment to create change. I started to see that my body was just a tool, an instrument used as a dwelling place for part of who I was.
This concept was life changing. If it wasn't who I really was then why would I associate guilt with its appearance. If I didn't identify with it, how could I create emotional attachment to it that caused pain. Moving forward with this understanding led me to view my body in a completely different way. I now saw it as an instrument that could add value to my physical experience. Because of this new interpretation, the guilt I felt began to lessen.

Empowerment = less Guilt
Remove guilt, and you will become empowered because you align yourself more with oneness. Your removing ideas of separation that hinder the flow of Empowerment.
I made a decision to accept my body the way it was and see it as perfect. It was perfect, perfectly created by my thoughts and interpretations. In its complete perfection, I could now exercise different thoughts and create a different body.
I simply sent out an intention of how I wanted to feel. I knew that my current experience was one of laziness, sickness, disease of the liver, and a whole buffet of undesirable side effects. I wanted to feel healthy, I wanted to feel in control, I wanted to feel vibrant and full of energy. This was my new focus.. I no longer allowed myself to be guilt tripped if I wanted a burger or to fire up the grill, I simply just payed attention to it and its affect on my body. If the result was one that I didn't desire, merely just noted it and focused on how I truly wanted to feel. I kept my mind focused by seeking material that I thought might have value. I read a lot that really didn't resonate with me, most of it seemed superficial and lame; just a fad to make money and push human natured agendas. However, I did find some truths that made sense to my inner man.
30 Days:The end of this story results in me challenging myself with a 30 day trial, I had come to the point where I strongly believed I could make some changes. I committed to try a vegan diet for 30 days and see what affect it had on my body. The awesome part is that I didn't have to commit to a life long decision, it was a matter of creative discovery to see what worked best for me in obtaining my desired outcome, which was to feel more alive physically.
30 days of no animal products, with a concentrated effort towards eating a plant based-whole foods diet. Before going on this trial, I was empowered to for see some challenges that might keep me from reaching my goal. I simply addressed those challenges and did what I could to steer clear or eliminate them before I started.
The end result was I experienced many of the changes I was searching for, and it was extraordinarily easier than I thought it might be. I simply was amazed, I lost 18 pounds and experienced a level of energy I hadn't ever felt before. I didn't have any work out routine and didn't go to the gym, there were many times I would be sitting at work and become overwhelmed with physical energy; I was compelled to find a quite place and just do push ups. I remember one time when I was sweating from just sitting and got up and went and did 35 push ups, I could remember the last time I had done 35 push ups! Before this trial my push up count would be in the single digits. I have continued this way of eating and experienced many more benefits along the way.
I went from a hard core devouring fast food meat eater, to a light hearted green loving, fruit cutting, whole grain eating vegan. This change, pretty much happened over night, but the process was... a process. This change came with a mental shift of how I viewed myself and how I viewed the relationship or oneness between myself and what I put in my body.
When we become empowered, the changes we desire to make happen in their own perfect timing with elegance and grace; not to say its void of challenges, but we have the strength to endure in a fashion that seems almost effortless.

Wrap... it... up:
There is so much more I want to write, but I need to wrap it up because I'm already over 2,500 words. I hope your attention span is still in play. Especially if you're reading this on a computer screen, usually when I find helpful content online I copy and past to a document and print it for comfy reading in my chair.
With the example above, I've had many like it to help move me in a more positive direction. One that was really exciting was giving up a cocaine habit over night with almost no resistance. This way of living is not very common. We are taught to fight for what we want, life is suppose to be a struggle, you have to take in order to receive; I simply do not believe this is true, I see it as being a very separated way of living.

The Goal:
The empowered goal is to move forward by adopting more thoughts based in oneness; this is most efficiently done by removing thoughts of separation. If we desire to live in the flow of oneness, we must first believe we can. I encourage you to stop every once in a while in your busy life and notice the beauty around you, and then recognize you are that beauty.

Conclusion:
Your path is unique, where you are is perfect. Remove the guilt you feel by recognizing you are not the circumstance, not the body, and not the mind; you my friend are oneness. Even if its just for five minutes per day, meditate on Empowerment and what if means for you. If you just feel stuck and can't move forward, then that is okay, your day is coming but you must do your part. You must be willing to grow someway – somehow.
My apologies if this seems somewhat incomplete, I'm finding that my 2,000 word maximum goal may not be enough to communicate fully what I'm trying to express. Take the ideas and the value you can and be empowered.

Empowerment for the Willing Mind

-tiger

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