The essence of the Air Element is Thoughts, Beliefs and thus Personal Reality / Truth… What is your Truth? Is it static? What reality are you living? Are you willing to shift/change your beliefs? Do you understand it it up to you?
Understanding that what we believe can be changed, is indeed a powerful platform for our personal evolution, and also that of societies, cultures and the whole of the planet. Belief is the realm of the mind, and is the most powerful of all the Elemental forces explored thus far within this series of articles on Earth, Water & Fire. Essentially, our beliefs are a sum total of all of our thoughts, which tend to repeat themselves over and over, day after day. For better or worse. If we are discontent with life – look to what you are thinking. Few people understand that it is the mind that blames and projects our dire circumstances onto others, with the unaddressed assumption that we, personally, have no power over the results. What if that belief were the biggest misguided belief ever???
Your / my truth is what we believe at any given moment… it could be similar to what we thought 30 years ago, or different than yesterday. If and how our beliefs change depends on many factors, but it is likely some beliefs will change over time. Experiential learning (which includes traumatic events), education (book learning) as well as what evolves out of daily engagements within personal and professional environments, influences our beliefs and personal ‘truth’. When we look around the globe and acknowledge the various ways people live their lives, we can conclude that ‘Truth is Relative’. The relative nature of truth is an Eternal truth, an understanding that fosters acceptance of diversity. It also helps to recognize that ‘truth’ is subject to change, personally, communally, spiritually and globally.
Explore this: What did you believe that was changed in a instant? I believed my husband was faithful – well, not-so-much… it took me years to wrap my head around the lessons of betrayal. I believed that when my child was born – it would be a joyous occasion – poof – he almost died and continues to have neurological challenges that interfere with his ‘normal’ functioning in society. My intention in revealing these intimate confessions, is not for you to feel sorry for me, but to reveal the complexity of events that serve to alter our thinking processes. After processing these experiential challenges, I went through many stages, and am glad I continued to question my thoughts and beliefs. I will summarize the process, succinctly.
First the experience unfolded, either over a longish or rather short period of time. It is followed by emotional and mental chaos. (Since the emotional aspect is within the water element, I won’t dive into it here). The chaos of thoughts is like slamming your thumb in a door: initial shock, pain happens fairly local… pinging and pang-ing close to home, then radiating out. More thoughts, more expansion of pain that begins to flutter into all realms of one’s life, and ideas about what is known and believed transforms. Over time, thoughts sort themselves out, new conclusions are formed, new beliefs aligned with, and one heals. The degree of healing and conscious evolution is dependent upon whether you feed the Drama Triangle, or the ‘I am responsible for my life’ MO (Modus Operandii).
The Drama Triangle consists of Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer. If you identify with one, it is a slippery slope into either of the others – you then just move around the triangle playing different roles, and life and your consciousness never truly evolves; in fact it likely gets worse as you pack the bruises atop each other. All such roles promote limiting beliefs about one’s life and potentials, and contribute to entrenching in ‘them against me’ perceptions. I call this devolving consciousness. 
But what I learned through yoga, and meditation specifically, is that it is up to us personally to manage the mind, our thoughts and beliefs. I have shifted my perceptions so much so that I have come to genuinely appreciate the challenging personal and professional experiences, and credit them for my personal expansion of consciousness. Post marriage, soon after information unfolded, I believed my wusband to have an intentionally harmful agenda towards me; now I believe he did the best he could to get his needs met, which for every human is essentially the same: love, understanding and acceptance. I wasn’t particularly accepting of who he was for the last years of our marriage – truthfully, I wanted him to be different. I accept that I did not realize how damaging the energy of those desires were for him – painful I’m sure. These are a few of the shifts of thoughts and beliefs that changed for me. I don’t intend to repeat that scenario. I call this Evolving Consciousness.
I hope you understand how profound the difference is between the 2 paths: compare and contrast Hitler and Gandhi. One chose a path to Freedom by destroying those he projected as different; fear focused upon eradication of the other. Gandhi believed freedom was possible through non-violence and lived a life devoted to recognizing the worth of every human being. These two historic figures reveal the extremes of paths to freedom: the low and high roads of thinking and consciousness as truth expressed here on Earth.
What thinking patterns, thus beliefs do you presently hold that serve the low road, and what, the high road? The amazing power of our thinking, is that we can reflect and observe the patterns, and make conscious choices. I reiterate; it is meditation that facilitates the shift on to the high road. The lower mind / ego personality will object, but stay with exploring differing methods. Find some way that teaches you to be in the present moment, expand beyond personality. Embrace common humanity and divinity – that which exists within each and every one of us: you, me, us and them… until we are all one.
Another amazing benefit of meditation, (in addition to the gradual transformation of thinking habits and beliefs), is that the ‘witness consciousness’ emerges and begins to prevails in all circumstances. This soul source energy within, if given the ultimate seat of power, consistently chooses wisely.
I’d love to hear your ruminations on what you struggle with – the thoughts that dis-empower – you, others, the world. And those that support a vibration of love and peace, which are so much more powerful than all the faces of fear.
I suppose living in pain causes one to feel that if I figure out what to do that is right, I will be healed. I know this is incorrect thinking, victim. Hard to accept that life is now this and I must just accept it, anger! Such longing to have normalcy in life again.
I hear you Julie, I think that is you recognize thoughts that contribute to stress in any way, those are worth dropping. For example…’oh here comes the pain… I wish it would go away… I’m so tired of so much pain… I can’t stand this any more…” So thoughts that suggest you should be able to fix it, are dis-empowering, and best be regarded as a cloud passing in the sky – don’t let it take hold. Tricky stuff, but the more we can relax and go to a place of acceptance of what we are experiencing moment to moment, the freer we are, and less likely to add mental pain – which exacerbates physical pain!