As part of the Mountains to Sea Book Festival held in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin on 7-12 September, I attended an interesting debate on the digital revolution. The focus was on the likely future of the publishing industry, and how bookshops, libraries and readers will be affected by the growing trend in e-books and other digital media. The panel of experts* had some interesting views, although all four admitted to not knowing what the future held.
Great discussion ...as far as it went. What I felt was missing, however, was 1) a more proactive, opportunistic approach and 2) a more probing look at the evolution not just of the printed word but of the word itself.
1) It’s clear that we’re living in an increasingly digital environment and, despite what Tim Waterstone maintained, I doubt that there will be many physical bookshops left by 2020. It’s not that they don’t represent a unique retailing experience, as he claims; they do, but that won’t be enough to ensure their survival. It won’t be enough to have ‘good’ bookshops, filled with interesting books, a wide range of genres, and helpful, knowledgeable staff. This kind of offering is too passive to be sustainable in our rapidly evolving world. What’s required is a much more seamless marriage between digital and printed products, and an active embracement of emerging media opportunities. ‘Good’ bookshops will have e-readers, Kindles, iPads, computer stations for downloading e-books with the assistance of staff, and printing stations for those who want to print out all or part of their e-book. They will have an educational component, offering instruction on digital browsing, blog writing/posting, apps, and other elements relating to social and interactive media. They will become leaders in written and digital communication, rather than simply trying to add value to the static printed-book product.
2) The digital revolution has had another significant impact: in addition to changing our mechanisms of communication, it is changing the language itself. SMS, e-mails and other forms of instant communication are causing our language to become fragmented and to be broken down into its most primitive elements. Words are truncated and punctuation is omitted. Keywords are used as code. Some claim that our language is simply evolving; that may be true, but it’s not a pretty sight. To me, language appears to be degenerating. People write your when they mean you’re, whose when they mean who’s, it’s when they mean its, and which when they mean that. It’s sloppy, unattractive and downright annoying — for those who love language. Unfortunately, even before the digital revolution, our education systems failed to efficiently teach grammatical correctness or promote the value of eloquent, articulate communication. Now, for young people particularly, the ability to communicate via online social media is far more important than the art of communication. And this is the key issue: we are losing the integrity and artistry of our language. Even printed books produced by well-known publishing houses are full of grammatical errors and lazy punctuation — quite apart from the Americanisms that have seeped into every linguistic crevice of the Anglophone world.
While the digital revolution may be hugely beneficial in terms of enhancing the content of what we say and the mechanisms we use to deliver our message, it is decimating our language and the articulacy with which we express ourselves. For most people, that doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, that collective indifference is reducing our communications down to the level of the lowest common denominator. While global digital communication is shrinking our world and putting us increasingly in touch with each other, it’s resulting in multi-tasking, short attention spans, rapid-fire communication, and chronic interruptions. It’s also shrinking our brains, affecting our health, and diluting our linguistic personality in ways that will ultimately force us to emotionally reconnect with ourselves, to revert to old values, and to turn off the computer, the cellphone, the iPhone, the iPod and the whole wide world of digital noise so we can curl up peacefully on the sofa with a really good book.
* Tim Waterstone, founder of Waterstone Books; Rachel Cooke, writer/columnist for The Observer and The New Statesman; Jamie Byng, owner/operator of Canongate Books; and Matthew Kneale, author and historian. The discussion was moderated by Eoin Purcell, Editor of Irish Publishing News.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
On the run - one woman's quest for answers
The following article was published in March 2010 in Positive Life, an Irish magazine for which I write a regular column.
When I was growing up, I used to dream of running away from home. I’d jump out the window, climb over the front gate and then belt down the road as fast as my short little legs could carry me. In my dream, I was always caught and brought back home. I varied my route each night, in the hope of evading my faceless pursuers, but they always found me. As soon as I was old enough, I did run away from home. I left Ireland and kept on running. I ran to Scotland, to Italy, to Switzerland; I ran all over Europe; I ran to Canada and the States, the Caribbean, Mexico and all over Latin America. I ran to Kenya, Bali and the Seychelles. Over 35 countries and 26 years later, I’m back in Ireland, breathless and dizzy.
My globetrotting opened up a whole new world of awareness. I realised, of course, that it wasn’t home I was running from; it was me. And then I realised that it wasn’t me, either; it was all the things I’d been taught about myself that had created a frantic web of angst and insecurity. I’d been running from what I thought of as the truth—that I was not good enough, I was an imposter waiting to be found out, and I didn’t deserve to have the love or life I wanted. I was driven by generations of negative programming that created struggle, anxiety and disappointment—the inevitable product of an oppressed, religious nation that preached penance and low self-worth.
Fortunately, my worldwide marathon led me to some deeper truths. As a kinesiologist and counsellor with a questioning, sceptical mind, I delved into the human psyche, exploring the subconscious dynamics that drive our relationships, our health, our economy and our world. What I discovered was a reality that transformed my life, bringing love, enlightenment and more laughter lines than I thought possible on a human face. But it’s a reality that few can conceive of: when I tell people that our negative beliefs literally determine our circumstances in life, and that we all attract particular people, partners, challenges and crises, as a result of how we’ve been subconsciously programmed as children, their eyes glaze over and they’re back to worrying about how to pay their Visa bill.
Ironically, the programming itself (the beliefs, fears and limitations we absorb from parents, teachers, the church...) is the very thing that gets in the way of us realising that it’s the very thing getting in our way. In fact, it’s probably the ONLY thing stopping most people from leading, or even imagining, their ideal life. It doesn’t just determine the way we think, how we perceive the world or what we think is possible for us; it has a physical, magnetic quality that literally causes us to attract a certain level of love, money, ease, success and fulfillment in life.
Finally, I’d begun to make sense of my world and to understand why I (and a few billion others) was driven to behave a certain way, to believe certain things, to expect certain outcomes—and to attract exactly that. I began to see that the root of our problems lay buried in our subconscious minds and that changing our negative programming changed everything.
It’s not the loss of our booming economy that we need to worry about; it’s the loss of our self-worth, our emotional freedom and our ability to see beyond the negative beliefs that keep us stuck. Those beliefs keep us from seeing our true value, from feeling good about ourselves, from having healthy self-esteem, from expressing our personal power, from having loving, lasting relationships, from being healthy and whole, from fulfilling our dreams, from boosting our bank accounts ...and from being happy.
Of course, the miserable Irish weather doesn’t help. If I could just hire a massive tug and haul the whole soggy island southwards about 1,000km, I think we’d all feel a lot better. Failing that, though, the single most effective, powerful thing we can do is identify and address the negative programming that’s stopping us from being—and seeing—all that we can be.
Our negative programming sets us up for a life on the run; we’re either chasing something, in the hope that it will bring the success and fulfillment we seek, or we’re running away from whatever seems to be causing us grief, burying ourselves in denial with alcohol, cigarettes, soap operas, anti-depressants, cream buns and yummy dark chocolate. Only when we understand what’s really driving us can we finally stop running and come face to face with the deeper truth: we’re powerful, we’re creative, we’re worthy and, yes, we’re Irish.
When I was growing up, I used to dream of running away from home. I’d jump out the window, climb over the front gate and then belt down the road as fast as my short little legs could carry me. In my dream, I was always caught and brought back home. I varied my route each night, in the hope of evading my faceless pursuers, but they always found me. As soon as I was old enough, I did run away from home. I left Ireland and kept on running. I ran to Scotland, to Italy, to Switzerland; I ran all over Europe; I ran to Canada and the States, the Caribbean, Mexico and all over Latin America. I ran to Kenya, Bali and the Seychelles. Over 35 countries and 26 years later, I’m back in Ireland, breathless and dizzy.
My globetrotting opened up a whole new world of awareness. I realised, of course, that it wasn’t home I was running from; it was me. And then I realised that it wasn’t me, either; it was all the things I’d been taught about myself that had created a frantic web of angst and insecurity. I’d been running from what I thought of as the truth—that I was not good enough, I was an imposter waiting to be found out, and I didn’t deserve to have the love or life I wanted. I was driven by generations of negative programming that created struggle, anxiety and disappointment—the inevitable product of an oppressed, religious nation that preached penance and low self-worth.
Fortunately, my worldwide marathon led me to some deeper truths. As a kinesiologist and counsellor with a questioning, sceptical mind, I delved into the human psyche, exploring the subconscious dynamics that drive our relationships, our health, our economy and our world. What I discovered was a reality that transformed my life, bringing love, enlightenment and more laughter lines than I thought possible on a human face. But it’s a reality that few can conceive of: when I tell people that our negative beliefs literally determine our circumstances in life, and that we all attract particular people, partners, challenges and crises, as a result of how we’ve been subconsciously programmed as children, their eyes glaze over and they’re back to worrying about how to pay their Visa bill.
Ironically, the programming itself (the beliefs, fears and limitations we absorb from parents, teachers, the church...) is the very thing that gets in the way of us realising that it’s the very thing getting in our way. In fact, it’s probably the ONLY thing stopping most people from leading, or even imagining, their ideal life. It doesn’t just determine the way we think, how we perceive the world or what we think is possible for us; it has a physical, magnetic quality that literally causes us to attract a certain level of love, money, ease, success and fulfillment in life.
Finally, I’d begun to make sense of my world and to understand why I (and a few billion others) was driven to behave a certain way, to believe certain things, to expect certain outcomes—and to attract exactly that. I began to see that the root of our problems lay buried in our subconscious minds and that changing our negative programming changed everything.
It’s not the loss of our booming economy that we need to worry about; it’s the loss of our self-worth, our emotional freedom and our ability to see beyond the negative beliefs that keep us stuck. Those beliefs keep us from seeing our true value, from feeling good about ourselves, from having healthy self-esteem, from expressing our personal power, from having loving, lasting relationships, from being healthy and whole, from fulfilling our dreams, from boosting our bank accounts ...and from being happy.
Of course, the miserable Irish weather doesn’t help. If I could just hire a massive tug and haul the whole soggy island southwards about 1,000km, I think we’d all feel a lot better. Failing that, though, the single most effective, powerful thing we can do is identify and address the negative programming that’s stopping us from being—and seeing—all that we can be.
Our negative programming sets us up for a life on the run; we’re either chasing something, in the hope that it will bring the success and fulfillment we seek, or we’re running away from whatever seems to be causing us grief, burying ourselves in denial with alcohol, cigarettes, soap operas, anti-depressants, cream buns and yummy dark chocolate. Only when we understand what’s really driving us can we finally stop running and come face to face with the deeper truth: we’re powerful, we’re creative, we’re worthy and, yes, we’re Irish.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Power to the steeple (Are we missing the point of religion?)
I grew up in Ireland – but I’m not a Catholic, I’m not religious, I don’t get legless at the pub on Friday night and I don’t drink strong black tea with lots of milk and sugar. I don’t even have an Irish accent ...except maybe when I’m angry. But I do have a quirky sense of humour – which prompts me to look at things from a slightly skewed perspective.
When you grow up in a fiercely religious country, you tend to either go with the crowd or break off on your own completely. I did the latter. Apart from the obvious search for meaning, a need for community or a sense of belonging, and a desire for answers to life’s conundrums, I see no reason at all to embrace any kind of organized religion (and I’m not talking about spirituality). For me, using religion as a guiding force in your life is a bit like going to the spa for some pampering when what you really need is a divorce. It’s the wrong place to go for what ails you; it will keep you stuck in denial; and you’ll pay dearly for sustaining the illusion.
Every institution in society – government, marriage, the Church – is essentially a system of practices and beliefs designed to maintain law and order and keep certain people in power. And, as with all clever marketing strategies, one is often played off against the other. While the American $1 bill may claim, In God we trust, God has taken the rap for a multitude of things that had nothing to do with Him, Her, It or Whatever’s-Out-There—and everything to do with human greed, dysfunction and disempowerment. But this is not about debunking religious beliefs or even the existence of God. It’s about understanding what religion represents and why it so pervades our lives.
For God’s sake...?
Religion is one of the most ingenious devices ever invented to stop us from realizing our own power. (No wonder presidents use it.) It causes us to focus on an external power—a power that we can blame when it ‘allows’ bad things to happen and praise when it ‘makes’ things go well. And if we experience what we might think of as a miracle or ‘divine intervention’, it is likely to be so distorted by religious filters that we end up completely bypassing a much deeper truth. Over 2000 years of story-telling, skillful editing and relentless indoctrination have blinded us to a power and a reality far greater than anything ever written in the Bible, the Koran or any other religious text.
Yet getting to that truth or even exploring the possibility of it is like negotiating a mine field. Even now, as you’re reading this, your beliefs and judgements will be getting in the way of you keeping an open mind. You may think you already know what this is about or that you’ve heard it all before. Yet the context for your beliefs is not your own, and your mind is filled with concepts that you may not even consciously agree with; even if you’re an atheist, you probably can’t curse, express disbelief or have an orgasm without invoking God. You can’t help it. You’re working against a backdrop of pre-programmed ideas that don’t just shape what you think and believe; they shape the way you think and your ability to process new information.
Religion re-defined
When you strip away the idea of a god ‘out there’ and when you remove all constructs (such as government and religion) that are built on faith, fear and punishment, you realize that all such systems have one common purpose: to disempower you as an individual and to keep you from recognizing that your power lies in not being bound by collective beliefs. It lies, instead, in understanding where all true power and related beliefs are born, bred and propagated.
Your power lies in your subconscious, where most of your beliefs became rooted, beyond your reach, at an age when you had no say in the matter. When I was growing up in Ireland, my best friend lived next door. She was brought up strictly Catholic, attending Mass every week and going to a school run by nuns, whereas I was occasionally taken to a Methodist church, sometimes to a Presbyterian, but more often just up the hill to sit and admire the lovely view of Killiney Bay. While my friend and I had very different religious beliefs foisted upon us, our upbringing was otherwise very similar – with lots of other equally limiting beliefs getting in the way of us being truly ourselves.
Whether it’s parental conditioning or religious indoctrination, your programming prevents true self-dominion. Yet your programming is the very thing that will get in the way of you realizing that it is the very thing getting in your way. If you could manage to crowbar your way inside your brain, to reach your raw, untainted thinking processes, you’d discover a vast world of untapped potential.
Your subconscious mind is a powerful magnetic force that causes you to attract very particular people and circumstances in accordance with how it has been programmed. This means that your programming literally determines your circumstances. You’ve been positively programmed in many ways too, of course, but if your negative programming remains unaddressed, you’ll attract struggle and negative outcomes in your life and you’ll fall short of your potential. You may think that God or the universe has prevented you from having the love, money or success that you want, but it’s your programming that decides. If you’ve been programmed to believe that you don’t deserve to be wealthy, there’s no point in praying to God for the big bucks. The answer to your prayers will only come when you’ve enhanced your subconscious self-worth.
This is not to say that there is no God but that, if there is one, it is in you or operating through you in ways that religious and political leaders would have huge resistance to accepting. Ironically, these leaders are usually no more aware of their inherent power than you are of yours. What they do know for sure is that generating fear and guilt among the masses is the most effective way to make them do what they want—and to keep themselves in power. If they knew the true meaning and nature of personal power, there would be no need for—and no satisfaction in deploying—any kind of fear-mongering, bullying or manipulation.
Because you’ve been taught to believe that your life is beyond your control, you won’t think in terms of having created your own circumstances and will, instead, blame them on God, destiny, bad luck, the economy, random chaos or your next-door neighbour. It’s an elaborate set-up that will keep you stuck forever unless you can suspend your negative beliefs and find a way to infiltrate the vast, complex terrain of your subconscious mind to change your programming.
It’s an inside job...
How much do you know about your subconscious? Do you know what’s in there? Do you know how much it runs your life? Of course you don’t, because it’s the biggest undercover operator that you’ll never get to meet. Your subconscious holds the key to the way you think, the beliefs you have, the way you operate and how successful, loved or wealthy you are in life. It controls you more than you can possibly imagine, making true personal freedom impossible. It decides what happens to you, what you think you’re worth and who you’ll marry, regardless of what you might ideally want. And it processes millions more pieces of information per second than your conscious mind—without your permission or knowledge.
Whatever your beliefs (and all religions have some aspects that are worth believing in), it’s far more important to know how you arrive at your beliefs, whether they are truly yours, how well they work for you, and whether they support you in being powerful, loving and fulfilled.
Do you choose penance or power?
Many religions preach penance and damnation, teaching us that we are worthless, undeserving and sinful—as if these negative, disempowering beliefs could actually serve us in some positive way. How can thinking of ourselves as sinful or disempowered help us? And if we believe in a vengeful god, who does that serve? It’s hard to see how living in fear can truly serve us as individuals, but it’s easy to see how promoting fear, guilt and dependency among those too disempowered to think for themselves supports the vast religious infrastructures that perpetuate such collective co-dependence.
Religion is essentially someone’s interpretation of reality. Based on something that supposedly happened centuries ago, a story unfolded and conclusions were drawn. Beliefs were then handed down from generation to generation, and accepted wholesale, without ever being tested for their validity by each new mind that took them on. Yet religious fervour can run so deep that we may be killed for speaking out against another’s beliefs. Why this intense investment in having others believe what we believe? Why is it not okay to believe what we want and to let others do the same? Why should someone else’s beliefs represent a threat to us? Would you care what others believed if you had never been forced to believe in certain things yourself? And if a belief is just a thought that got implanted in our mind by some person, place or event, why is it so important to hang onto it, when other, more life-enhancing beliefs might serve us better? What do we stand to lose if we let go of, or even think beyond, a particular belief?
The answers are in our programming. It shapes our sense of self and determines whether we see ourselves as worthy and powerful and whether we take responsibility for our choices, our emotions and our lives. If someone is blindly or fanatically attached to their beliefs—whether those beliefs relate to religion, politics or vegetarianism—it says far more about the believer than about the beliefs. Any kind of rigidity around certain beliefs demonstrates a deep insecurity that has nothing to do with the belief being so fervently defended. At some point in our programming, certain beliefs become so inextricably linked to our sense of security that we cannot separate them from our self-identity—and may defend them to the death. But we only ever feel the need to prove our validity when we subconsciously believe we’re ‘less than’. And it is only when we lack our own sense of security and power over our lives that we latch on to beliefs that hold the promise of salvation.
The nice thing about believing in your own power is that you can prove its validity to yourself—and, once you do, it won’t matter whether anyone else believes in it or not. Once you figure out how the subconscious works and how you can change your negative programming in practical ways, you start to realize just how much power you have over your circumstances. You understand why your life has unfolded the way it has and that every challenge is designed to strengthen a part of you made wobbly by your programming.
You also begin to see through the tactics used by parents, politicians, pastors and presidents to get you to do what they want. Whether it’s your parents (“Now, Johnny, if you’re a good boy and do what you’re told, you’ll go to heaven, but if you’re bad ...well, you know what happens to bad boys.”), a president (“If we don’t pour billions of dollars into military defence, we’ll be attacked by evil terrorists and you’ll lose all your freedom.”) or a religious leader (“Repent, you evil, worthless sinner, or you’ll burn in hell – and please don’t forget to put your offering in the basket.”), it’s all a form of negative programming designed to keep you disempowered.
So I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to church, but that the power you should be in awe of is the one inside you. It’s not ‘out there’, you don’t have to do penance to earn it, and you don’t need a go-between to create what you want. The power is in your programming. Fix that, and you’ll make a world of difference.
When you grow up in a fiercely religious country, you tend to either go with the crowd or break off on your own completely. I did the latter. Apart from the obvious search for meaning, a need for community or a sense of belonging, and a desire for answers to life’s conundrums, I see no reason at all to embrace any kind of organized religion (and I’m not talking about spirituality). For me, using religion as a guiding force in your life is a bit like going to the spa for some pampering when what you really need is a divorce. It’s the wrong place to go for what ails you; it will keep you stuck in denial; and you’ll pay dearly for sustaining the illusion.
Every institution in society – government, marriage, the Church – is essentially a system of practices and beliefs designed to maintain law and order and keep certain people in power. And, as with all clever marketing strategies, one is often played off against the other. While the American $1 bill may claim, In God we trust, God has taken the rap for a multitude of things that had nothing to do with Him, Her, It or Whatever’s-Out-There—and everything to do with human greed, dysfunction and disempowerment. But this is not about debunking religious beliefs or even the existence of God. It’s about understanding what religion represents and why it so pervades our lives.
For God’s sake...?
Religion is one of the most ingenious devices ever invented to stop us from realizing our own power. (No wonder presidents use it.) It causes us to focus on an external power—a power that we can blame when it ‘allows’ bad things to happen and praise when it ‘makes’ things go well. And if we experience what we might think of as a miracle or ‘divine intervention’, it is likely to be so distorted by religious filters that we end up completely bypassing a much deeper truth. Over 2000 years of story-telling, skillful editing and relentless indoctrination have blinded us to a power and a reality far greater than anything ever written in the Bible, the Koran or any other religious text.
Yet getting to that truth or even exploring the possibility of it is like negotiating a mine field. Even now, as you’re reading this, your beliefs and judgements will be getting in the way of you keeping an open mind. You may think you already know what this is about or that you’ve heard it all before. Yet the context for your beliefs is not your own, and your mind is filled with concepts that you may not even consciously agree with; even if you’re an atheist, you probably can’t curse, express disbelief or have an orgasm without invoking God. You can’t help it. You’re working against a backdrop of pre-programmed ideas that don’t just shape what you think and believe; they shape the way you think and your ability to process new information.
Religion re-defined
When you strip away the idea of a god ‘out there’ and when you remove all constructs (such as government and religion) that are built on faith, fear and punishment, you realize that all such systems have one common purpose: to disempower you as an individual and to keep you from recognizing that your power lies in not being bound by collective beliefs. It lies, instead, in understanding where all true power and related beliefs are born, bred and propagated.
Your power lies in your subconscious, where most of your beliefs became rooted, beyond your reach, at an age when you had no say in the matter. When I was growing up in Ireland, my best friend lived next door. She was brought up strictly Catholic, attending Mass every week and going to a school run by nuns, whereas I was occasionally taken to a Methodist church, sometimes to a Presbyterian, but more often just up the hill to sit and admire the lovely view of Killiney Bay. While my friend and I had very different religious beliefs foisted upon us, our upbringing was otherwise very similar – with lots of other equally limiting beliefs getting in the way of us being truly ourselves.
Whether it’s parental conditioning or religious indoctrination, your programming prevents true self-dominion. Yet your programming is the very thing that will get in the way of you realizing that it is the very thing getting in your way. If you could manage to crowbar your way inside your brain, to reach your raw, untainted thinking processes, you’d discover a vast world of untapped potential.
Your subconscious mind is a powerful magnetic force that causes you to attract very particular people and circumstances in accordance with how it has been programmed. This means that your programming literally determines your circumstances. You’ve been positively programmed in many ways too, of course, but if your negative programming remains unaddressed, you’ll attract struggle and negative outcomes in your life and you’ll fall short of your potential. You may think that God or the universe has prevented you from having the love, money or success that you want, but it’s your programming that decides. If you’ve been programmed to believe that you don’t deserve to be wealthy, there’s no point in praying to God for the big bucks. The answer to your prayers will only come when you’ve enhanced your subconscious self-worth.
This is not to say that there is no God but that, if there is one, it is in you or operating through you in ways that religious and political leaders would have huge resistance to accepting. Ironically, these leaders are usually no more aware of their inherent power than you are of yours. What they do know for sure is that generating fear and guilt among the masses is the most effective way to make them do what they want—and to keep themselves in power. If they knew the true meaning and nature of personal power, there would be no need for—and no satisfaction in deploying—any kind of fear-mongering, bullying or manipulation.
Because you’ve been taught to believe that your life is beyond your control, you won’t think in terms of having created your own circumstances and will, instead, blame them on God, destiny, bad luck, the economy, random chaos or your next-door neighbour. It’s an elaborate set-up that will keep you stuck forever unless you can suspend your negative beliefs and find a way to infiltrate the vast, complex terrain of your subconscious mind to change your programming.
It’s an inside job...
How much do you know about your subconscious? Do you know what’s in there? Do you know how much it runs your life? Of course you don’t, because it’s the biggest undercover operator that you’ll never get to meet. Your subconscious holds the key to the way you think, the beliefs you have, the way you operate and how successful, loved or wealthy you are in life. It controls you more than you can possibly imagine, making true personal freedom impossible. It decides what happens to you, what you think you’re worth and who you’ll marry, regardless of what you might ideally want. And it processes millions more pieces of information per second than your conscious mind—without your permission or knowledge.
Whatever your beliefs (and all religions have some aspects that are worth believing in), it’s far more important to know how you arrive at your beliefs, whether they are truly yours, how well they work for you, and whether they support you in being powerful, loving and fulfilled.
Do you choose penance or power?
Many religions preach penance and damnation, teaching us that we are worthless, undeserving and sinful—as if these negative, disempowering beliefs could actually serve us in some positive way. How can thinking of ourselves as sinful or disempowered help us? And if we believe in a vengeful god, who does that serve? It’s hard to see how living in fear can truly serve us as individuals, but it’s easy to see how promoting fear, guilt and dependency among those too disempowered to think for themselves supports the vast religious infrastructures that perpetuate such collective co-dependence.
Religion is essentially someone’s interpretation of reality. Based on something that supposedly happened centuries ago, a story unfolded and conclusions were drawn. Beliefs were then handed down from generation to generation, and accepted wholesale, without ever being tested for their validity by each new mind that took them on. Yet religious fervour can run so deep that we may be killed for speaking out against another’s beliefs. Why this intense investment in having others believe what we believe? Why is it not okay to believe what we want and to let others do the same? Why should someone else’s beliefs represent a threat to us? Would you care what others believed if you had never been forced to believe in certain things yourself? And if a belief is just a thought that got implanted in our mind by some person, place or event, why is it so important to hang onto it, when other, more life-enhancing beliefs might serve us better? What do we stand to lose if we let go of, or even think beyond, a particular belief?
The answers are in our programming. It shapes our sense of self and determines whether we see ourselves as worthy and powerful and whether we take responsibility for our choices, our emotions and our lives. If someone is blindly or fanatically attached to their beliefs—whether those beliefs relate to religion, politics or vegetarianism—it says far more about the believer than about the beliefs. Any kind of rigidity around certain beliefs demonstrates a deep insecurity that has nothing to do with the belief being so fervently defended. At some point in our programming, certain beliefs become so inextricably linked to our sense of security that we cannot separate them from our self-identity—and may defend them to the death. But we only ever feel the need to prove our validity when we subconsciously believe we’re ‘less than’. And it is only when we lack our own sense of security and power over our lives that we latch on to beliefs that hold the promise of salvation.
The nice thing about believing in your own power is that you can prove its validity to yourself—and, once you do, it won’t matter whether anyone else believes in it or not. Once you figure out how the subconscious works and how you can change your negative programming in practical ways, you start to realize just how much power you have over your circumstances. You understand why your life has unfolded the way it has and that every challenge is designed to strengthen a part of you made wobbly by your programming.
You also begin to see through the tactics used by parents, politicians, pastors and presidents to get you to do what they want. Whether it’s your parents (“Now, Johnny, if you’re a good boy and do what you’re told, you’ll go to heaven, but if you’re bad ...well, you know what happens to bad boys.”), a president (“If we don’t pour billions of dollars into military defence, we’ll be attacked by evil terrorists and you’ll lose all your freedom.”) or a religious leader (“Repent, you evil, worthless sinner, or you’ll burn in hell – and please don’t forget to put your offering in the basket.”), it’s all a form of negative programming designed to keep you disempowered.
So I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to church, but that the power you should be in awe of is the one inside you. It’s not ‘out there’, you don’t have to do penance to earn it, and you don’t need a go-between to create what you want. The power is in your programming. Fix that, and you’ll make a world of difference.
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