We end up liv­ing a life that we con­stantly think of and dream of. We will real­ize this fact, if we take a few moments from our busy lives to look back and con­tem­plate on what hap­pened so far and what was our men­tal state dur­ing those times. Though this may come as a shock or make us feel uncom­fort­able, once we real­ize that so far we have been lim­ited by our own thoughts and imag­in­ings, we can make a deci­sion to move into a higher vibra­tory realm of real­iz­ing our lim­it­less potential.

Lim­it­ing Thoughts and Beliefs

The more lim­it­ing thoughts we have, the more lim­ited we become. That is, we become what we con­stantly think of and attract only that which res­onates with our lim­ited think­ing and lim­it­ing beliefs. What are these lim­it­ing thoughts? Any thought that induces fear and self-doubt in us, and makes us feel con­stricted, heavy and uneasy is a lim­it­ing thought. These lim­it­ing thoughts come from our lim­ited ego-self which is full of fear and self-doubt whereas our lim­it­less poten­tial is real­ized through our Higher or Divine Self.

Exam­ples of lim­it­ing thoughts, that ego keeps telling us, are:

• I am not wor­thy of hav­ing a great life
• I am not wor­thy of being a musician
• I don’t deserve this or that praise
• I don’t have this or that ability
• I am not wor­thy of being rich
• If only I had a job, then I will get a good spouse
• If only I had more money, I could be happy
• If only I had this, then my life will be this or that great
• If only this, then I will have that…
• If only…

These type of lim­it­ing thoughts are put into our heads by our­selves or by oth­ers as a con­di­tion­ing. For exam­ple, if you are not yet mar­ried or even dat­ing, but want to, you may be telling your­self or some­one else may be telling you, “If you only had a good job or wear such and such clothes or be rich, …, you would be dating/married to a good per­son by now.” That is a lim­it­ing thought, which puts more impor­tance on this other per­son than your-Self. It is, essen­tially, say­ing, “You are not good enough as you are now, but some­how a job or accom­plish­ing some­thing is going to make you bet­ter and attrac­tive.” The impor­tance or empha­sis should be on you and not on some other per­son. By rec­og­niz­ing that who­ever is telling you this—either you or some­one else—is com­ing from “lim­it­ing” think­ing and belief sys­tems, you can move on to a more expan­sive think­ing using the help from your Higher Self. Of course, if you want a good job, or want to be rich, not because some­one is telling you to do, but because it makes you con­tent and that is the expe­ri­ence you want, then it is okay.

If you rec­og­nize now that you are lim­ited by your cur­rent belief sys­tems and decide that you want to become more expan­sive, then it is time for you to put the past expe­ri­ences behind and move for­ward with the wis­dom and insight you gained from them.

You should never do any­thing that does not give you joy and move you for­ward towards divine love and light. Don’t do any­thing because it makes some­one else happy, even though it makes you mis­er­able. You should do any­thing, only because it gives you joy. If you are joy­ful, then you radi­ate that joy to your envi­ron­ment, and that will make every­body around you to auto­mat­i­cally share that joy and them­selves become joy­ful. If you are liv­ing with lim­it­ing thoughts, then it is time for you to move for­ward into joy and light, rather than remain stuck in the dark­ness of the emo­tional dra­mas being played out in your life now. The deci­sion is yours to make.

Lord Sri Krishna said in Bha­gavad Gita, that svad­harma is more impor­tant than parad­harma and fol­low­ing parad­harma is detri­men­tal to your Self–progress and cause for immense fear and con­flict. The word sva means Self, para means other’s or out­side of one’s own Self, and dharma means innate nature. So, fol­low­ing guid­ance from and the nature of one’s own Higher/inner Self is bet­ter than fol­low­ing other’s (out­side of your own inner Self) path. The lat­ter is cause for fear because it may not match the path shown by your inner Self.

Tools for Iden­ti­fy­ing Your Cur­rent State of Being

• Ques­tion­ing—What am I feel­ing right now? Am I doing this because it gives me joy or is it to ful­fill some­one else’s expectations?
• Con­tem­pla­tion—Take a few min­utes daily to watch your thoughts with­out get­ting involved, mak­ing story out of them or judg­ing them as good or bad thoughts. Only cri­te­rion is, “Is this thought lim­it­ing me or mak­ing me feel expan­sive and joyful?”
• Stream of Con­scious­ness Writ­ing—Take a sheet of paper or your notebook/journal and just write what­ever comes to your mind with­out cen­sor­ship of any kind. Again, you should not judge it in any way. No edit­ing, no look­ing back, no cor­rect­ing, no wor­ries about gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion or spelling. This is not your high school Eng­lish class. It is meant for inner explo­ration. Write any­thing and every­thing that comes to your mind—a mind-dump, if you will.
• Jour­nal­ing—This could be top­i­cal. Take money, for exam­ple. You can find out what your lim­it­ing beliefs are about money. You can write on top of the page, “What are my lim­it­ing beliefs about money?” Then, focus/meditate on that ques­tion for a few min­utes and just start writ­ing in a stream of con­scious­ness way as dis­cussed above.

Implant­ing Lim­it­less Thoughts through Pos­i­tive Affirmations

Now, how do you move beyond the lim­it­ing thought pat­terns? By, implant­ing lim­it­less thoughts through affir­ma­tions into your sub­con­scious. Why do you want to do this? Why does it work? It is because lim­it­less thoughts are the realm of the Higher Self.

What are lim­it­less thoughts? Any thought that induces joy and bliss in you, awak­ens and makes you feel light and love your life, is a lim­it­less thought.

Liv­ing a lim­it­less life is in tune with the top-down approach to life dis­cussed here.

Note that, even­tu­ally we have to tran­scend even this so called pos­i­tive polar­ity, but pos­i­tive affir­ma­tions are a first step in the right direc­tion. It is like this: If you are under­ground, you need to first come to the sur­face, before you can fly to the skies.

“I Am” statement/affirmation that describes who you want to be and who you are at a deeper level, is a very pow­er­ful form of pos­i­tive affir­ma­tion that you can use. Here is my “I Am” state­ment. What­ever I do, I try for it to be in line with this state­ment. This “I Am” state­ment describes my lim­it­less­ness. As the time goes by, this state­ment may change a lit­tle, but not by much, and it cap­tures the essence of who I am.

You can start of with sim­ple affir­ma­tions given below, based on what you want at this moment in your life. You can also come up with your own lim­it­less thought affir­ma­tions using these as a tem­plate. Of course, your affir­ma­tions may change and evolve with time to be much deeper and a lot more expan­sive. The more you do your affir­ma­tions the more you con­nect with, and bring your Higher Self into your daily life.

• I Am the Great­est Celes­tial Musi­cian (If you want to be a musician)
• I Am the Great­est Celes­tial Dancer (If you want to be a dancer)
• I Am a Divinely Inspired Writer/Artist/… (If you want to be a writer/artist/…)
• I Am the Cre­ator (This encom­passes the above and also tells your sub­con­scious that you are the cre­ator of your des­tiny and the cre­ator who man­i­fests every­thing you desire)
• I Am the Supreme Love and Light (It is the eter­nal essence of who you are)
• I Am ________________________________________.

Notice that the above affir­ma­tions are lim­it­less thoughts, because they are expan­sive, and when you think of them they excite you and give you joy. As men­tioned above, “being lim­it­less” is in the realm of the Higher Self. Remem­ber these con­stantly as a mantra. If I grossly sim­plify the pur­pose and power of a mantra, “It is an affir­ma­tion with enor­mous power to change your sub­con­scious programming.”

Prac­tice

You can use one or more of the fol­low­ing med­i­ta­tion tech­niques to prac­tice your affirmations:

• Repeat your affir­ma­tions silently in a quiet place, for at least 15 mins., twice a day as a med­i­ta­tion. Focus on each word of the affir­ma­tion and feel them res­onat­ing in your being as you repeat.
• While doing these “I Am” affir­ma­tions, you can use your favorite col­ored light—gold, blue, pur­ple, green, or what­ever color (of course, black won’t work since it is not light)—and fill your body with that light. Visu­al­ize all impu­ri­ties in the color of black or gray, melt­ing away and the your favorite col­ored light fill­ing your entire body and expand­ing fur­ther into the environment.
• You can use the yOga nidra or yOgic rest technique(s) to implant your affir­ma­tions in your subconscious.
• You can do these med­i­ta­tions in your bed and doze off to sleep while doing the affir­ma­tions, so that they con­tinue in your sleep.
• Do the affir­ma­tions as soon as you wake up, but when you are still in that half-awake/half-asleep state in bed.
• Also, you can repeat these affir­ma­tions wher­ever you are and what­ever you are doing (CAUTION: make sure that what­ever you are doing does not require 100% of your atten­tion. You don’t want to get injured, in any­way), for exam­ple, wait­ing in your doctor’s office. You can just repeat your affir­ma­tions men­tally and no one would know that you are repeat­ing them.
• Reg­u­larly use the tools given in the last sec­tion to keep track of your men­tal state every­day. This will help you gauge your progress into an expanded state of being.

If you prac­tice these tech­niques, I would like to hear your expe­ri­ences. Good luck to you on your jour­ney into higher vibra­tory realms.