July 16, 2016
Saying No, To Say Yes
Insofar as we often find ourselves in transition and facing the paradox of change in our lives, encountering resistance is inevitable, but not insurmountable. Fortunately, we come equipped with a powerful capacity for renunciation, the power to release and eliminate anything we believe does not serve us. In short, we have the power to say, “No!”
In Charles Fillmore’s metaphysical classic The Twelve Powers, he delineates the power of renunciation, or elimination, as one of the twelve fundamental creative faculties of humankind. Fillmore places the energy center for this essential power in the lower intestinal area of the body’s digestive system, symbolically representing the natural capacity of our bodies to eliminate waste and toxins. Just as our body naturally eliminates that which is no longer serving it’s nutritional needs, the power of renunciation enables us to eliminate anything in our consciousness that is not serving our spiritual needs, or our greatest good. Using the power of renunciation, we are able to say no to anything that blocks or impedes our good, or our creative potential.
When we find ourselves enmeshed and stuck in the circumstances of transition or change in our lives, the power of renunciation is invaluable. To successfully navigate the potentially stormy seas of change and transition, we must be willing to release any aspect of our past experience that conceals the creative power of the newly born present moment and the inherent potential it holds to manifest a dynamic new future. If we wish to embrace the possibilities that change represents, we must say no to the past to say yes to the new future. We can only accomplish that by taking action in the ever present moment of now.
What exactly is the past anyway?
In short, the “past” is everything we think it is in our consciousness. The past is not necessarily a bad thing mind you. However, it is the past. The paradox of the past is it is not actually present in the reality of the now moment, except of course as it may reside in the activity of our own thoughts and feelings.
For example, we may be holding to a past belief that is keeping us stuck in denial and afraid of moving forward. Or, perhaps we are cleaving to an unforgiven grievance that is throttling our capacity to love. If so, we are actually misusing the power of our own imagination to project the memory of a past that is not real, or even happening, into the activity of our present moment consciousness. In effect, we are mortgaging the potential creative power of our present moment by reliving a memory not an actual experience.
Of course, at the level of consciousness, the future abides by the same standard. It too is merely a projection of our thoughts and feelings generated by our imagination. Both are imagined experiences and neither is real. All that is real to us at any time is the activity of our own consciousness.
What matters is not what is actually happening, but rather, what we think is happening. Ultimately, thinking is a limited expression of the power of our own imagination. This is especially true of thinking as it relates to memory, since memories rely on the recall of selective details that tend to degenerate and obscure the truth of the actual experience over time. Still, thinking possesses enough power to project a pseudo-experience that, though not real, has effects and consequences.
Even if it’s not real, it can seem real.
Fortunately though, because the memory is ultimately not real, we do have the power to choose to release it and the power we have given it. To this end, the power of renunciation empowers us to “say no” to that which blocks the activation of true creative power in the moment .
At the level of consciousness, we “say no to say yes” all day, every day, have been doing so all of our lives and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives. The corollary is also true. Every time we say yes to something, we simultaneously say no to other things. In fact, what we experience in any given moment is the sum total of everything we have ever said yes to, and everything we have ever said no to over the course of our entire lives.
Saying no to change is saying yes to resistance.
To many of us, life’s persistent invitation to change brings up the experience of resistance in our consciousness. The call to embrace necessary and inevitable transitions is usually met with first with fear before we move through it. However, many of us get stuck right there in that moment of fear and resist moving forward, resist letting go of that which no longer serves our growth.
If we are experiencing resistance to change, we are actually saying yes “to” the resistance and “no” to the creative potential of the new future. Either way, the power of renunciation is perpetually in play. Every time we say no to something, we say yes to something else. If we say no to the future, we say yes to being stuck in the present to a past that does not exist.
Change is inevitable. Resistance is optional.
The good news is the power of renunciation empowers us to flip the script. Instead, we can say “no” to the resistance to change and “yes” to the new future. We already know there’s nothing really behind us, except as we may imagine it to be and the future is ours to write any way we wish. But we have to be willing to say no to anything that blocks us from moving forward, anything that impedes us from saying yes to the fullest expression of our spiritual and creative potential.
The choice is always ours. We are free to stay as stuck as we want for as long as we desire, even unto the end of our lives if we so choose. However, when we grow weary of being stuck, when we get sick and tired of being sick and tired of the same old, same old, the power of renunciation is right there waiting to empower us to begin again, to move forward towards the creation of a new, dynamic future to leave to our children’s children’s children as an example of the powerful creative beings we are created to be.
Stay tuned in…
