So much of our lives is lived unconsciously. Even for those that take an active role in living consciously, in being deliberate in all their choices, in consciously deciding on the best course of action. We all have preconceived notions.
Those things that we freely admit we have bias for are the least among these notions. Ideas and thought forms that we have arrived at from the sum total of your lives do help build a foundation of preconceived ideas that we evaluate and judge the world around us. Yes, judge the world around us.
The human animal is a creature of assessment. We constantly scan our environment to see what is not normal, to see what is out of place, and to assess the threats around us. We don’t even know we do it most of the time. Our mind is filled with patterns that are normal and we filter those out to see the abnormal.
When we travel to places we haven’t been before, there is a heightened sense of awareness, which, depending on what type of person you are, you will feel as stress, fear or excitement. But it is an altered state that comes with being out of our normal environment. We don’t even have to travel to achieve this. A new job, a new neighborhood or a new date can all have an impact on us.
That impact will come with judgements and the judgements will come from a place that is typically without thought. It will be a place that has been filled with normal or not normal flags. It will be a space that will categorize everything as a threat or not. It is only human.
The trick in life to ending habits, to changing our path and to achieving goals that we have long desired, but struggled with, is to see the preconceived notions that guide us in our daily lives.
The most commonly occurring discussion on our preconceived notions is about money. There are many talks on how we view money. Most of them talk about our parents and our childhood experiences that shaped our knowledge and treatment of money. Maybe we went to church and the preacher talked about money as evil. Whatever the case, we have heard about how these childhood and life learnings have affected our ability to earn, save and spend.
The next step – the logical conclusion to this is to step past money, to step past the normal ideas of what is real in our lives and start to look for the same preconceived ideas – but about sex, relationships, neighborhoods, debt, jobs, careers and marriage. What is holding us back or enabling us in our lives is our preconceived notions about what is right and wrong and how the world works.
The first step to freedom – is freedom from self. The freedom to live a life that is not constrained by our preconceived, programmed patterns of existence. To truly live a conscious life, you need to free yourself from yourself.
