Intentions and emotions are largely involuntary pieces of the Mind. They run automatically until we can bring them from the subconscious into the conscious waking Mind. Through this process, we gain control of them and therefore ourselves rather than letting ourselves be controlled.
Values are core beliefs that we have to seek out and adopt. They are external concepts and ideas that we consciously recognize and want to bring into our subconscious. By adopting values, we place a filter in our subconscious that helps to clean up unruly emotions and free-flying intentions. They provide direction and align us to work with integrity. Through that filter, intentions become intentional. But there are other external concepts we have to adopt that are different from values. These are the Forces of the Mind.
The Forces of the Mind are external concepts and ideas we must consciously act upon. We can “adopt” these concepts similarly to Values, but the difference is that while values become a passive “hand on our shoulder” to guide us, Forces are concepts we must draw on and put in motion. Forces of the Mind do not act on their own. Their energies are readily available and they will never deny you their assistance, but you have to go to them and “ask” for their assistance.
Working with these Forces is what helps us directly and personally. You have heard the expression, “Forgiveness is not for the other person, it is for yourself.” This is exactly how the Forces of the Mind work. They provide a means and conveyance for your freedom and security. Just like my earlier example of the ship, the Forces of the Mind are the ship's crew. They need direction and orders but after spending some time working with them and with each other they need minimal directions. After some time you just have to call on them and they will know what needs to be done.
When the storms of life come along, the Forces are the things we need to call on to help us stabilize. The values direct us and create a stable footing. Forces help maintain that stability. We can think of the Forces like ants and the Mind like the anthill. When something disturbs the anthill or “breaks” it, the ants swarm out to protect it and rebuild. If you have accidentally stepped in a bed of Fireants you know just how much a force of reckoning they can be. I mentioned Forgiveness and that is one of many Forces of the Mind. It is quite a big one as well and not as easy as people like to think. You don’t just forgive someone one time and then it's over. You have to actively perform forgiveness daily.
That is true for every Force of the Mind. They are not one-and-done pieces that we can just passively recognize and move on. They are an active state of the Mind. We have to recognize the situations they are needed and then decide to act with them. Forgiveness is one that I want to cover here. The other three I want to talk about are Understanding, Trust, and Gratitude. Just like values, these are just a handful of what exists, but they are big handfuls and key ingredients to a stable foundation in all aspects of life. I mean that these are healthy to actively work on despite wanting to live a spiritual life. Let’s go ahead and dive into these.
Forgiveness
As I stated, forgiveness is not a one-time practice. Forgiveness does not equal forgetting. I once made a post on social media stating:
“Forgiveness is not hard because we forget how things felt. Forgiveness is hard because we ALLOW ourselves to remember those feelings and CHOOSE peace instead of anger, resentment, or vengeance. Forgiveness breaks the cycles and creates justice. Forgiveness takes time.”
Unpacking that gives us a few things to think about. First of course is the emotions. When we feel hurt by other people we want to dwell on that. Emotions are hard to let go of and move on from. Most of the time, the reason is because we want to point the finger of blame in their direction rather than looking at ourselves. Usually, when we feel hurt we are experiencing emotions we brought on ourselves. We tend to put expectations on others to be what we want them to be rather than letting them be who they are. We hold onto this hurt and blame another because they were just being themselves when we wanted them to be someone else. Forgiveness is how we can free ourselves from these emotions and make progress moving forward. We learn to look within and say, “Why do I feel these emotions? Were my wants overriding their individuality in my mind?” When we start asking ourselves these questions we realize we have to offer Forgiveness to ourselves more than we need to offer it to others.
When we choose to act by Forgiveness we allow ourselves to feel those emotions. We dive into the reasons behind those emotions including triggers and expectations. We cross-reference those emotional triggers against our values. Two different people are not going to have the same set of values. Harboring hurt emotions leads to those emotions I stated above; anger, resentment, and vengeance. People will go out of their way to be angry because the world is out to get them. The world is not out to get them, they simply forgot how to protect their peace. Forgiveness is exactly how we learn to protect our peace.
This does not mean that you will always be forgiving yourself. Please do not think you have to take on extreme amounts of guilt. Some people will maliciously perform acts against you. Do we need to harbor those heavy hurt emotions against them because we know that? No. Forgiveness creates justice in your world and the world around you. Imagine a person could connect to you with a water hose and they feed malicious actions through the hose towards you. They are filling passing all the negativity they hold onto you. You try to push it back on them but then your energy is in a constant state of war to hold that back. You in turn connect to others with your hoses and try to siphon that off to them to ease your burden. You either begin pulling their energy in pity to give you a leg up or you divert some of the malicious energy onto them. A vicious cycle has been created.
You may have started to picture this and visualized the people in your life caught in this cycle. Forgiveness is the answer because, again, it is how we protect our peace. When we look at the person who performed that initial malicious act and say we forgive them we learn to walk away. We essentially cut the hose so that we no longer receive the negativity and we no longer feed into it. At this point, we can forgive ourselves and cut the hoses from the people who unwittingly got hooked into the situation. We can choose at this point to repair the relationships with these people and we can even make the goodwill effort to talk things out with the person who started the cycle. But at the moment you fully give in to forgiveness, you have freed yourself from it all. Which gives you the power to completely walk away. Hopefully, you would do the healthy thing and at least tell the people you wronged that you are no longer entertaining the situation so they can also experience freedom.
The person with the malicious intent may have had a one-off moment. They may have a pattern of this behavior though. In a one-off moment, they may eventually come around to talk to you about it and try to repair things or create a moment of closure. Offer them grace and allow them freedom. The person with a pattern, on the other hand, will then try to attach that hose to someone else and create the cycle all over again. The more people in our society actively practice forgiveness the shorter and shorter that hose is going to get. The hose is special though, energy can only flow through it when connected to an external repository. The shorter that hose gets, and the more word gets around about their behaviors, the less likely others will fall victim. Eventually, they will have to face themselves and the backup of negative energy they can no longer push onto others. That doesn’t mean using forgiveness as a means of revenge though.
Truly working with forgiveness means that you are cutting ties binding you to another person. Which helps to create that shield of indifference I spoke of with emotions. When engaging with the Forces of the Mind you will find that the state of being indifferent grows. Indifference is not a negative thing, it is a state of innocence. In the context of Forgiveness, just as we cease to feed the animosity we also do not celebrate the downfall of others. Forgiveness means your role to play in the drama of another’s life has ended. When forgiveness is directed at ourselves we stop being the antagonist toward others, and when directed externally we stop being the victim.
Finally, Forgiveness takes time. It has to be enacted consistently, ritually some might say…*cough me, I say that cough*. The memories of the past resurface regularly and with those memories come the emotions tied to them. We will have triggers and moments that spark the onset of these memories. In terms of Forgiveness, we may reexperience the feelings of anger, pain, or sadness. That is perfectly normal in the process. We just have to take a second to repeat and express forgiveness for those moments. It can be physically stating out loud, “I have already forgiven this I offer my forgiveness again.” The more you practice this the less impact those emotions will have when the memories resurface. When the process is “complete,” no longer impactful rather, you will have the memory surface but instead of emotional responses you will look at the memory as a viewer. At this stage, you will begin to see the triggers you had before or gained from the situation. You will see the lessons you had to learn. You will be able to log the events as moments of new wisdom acquired. The list of positive rewards for utilizing forgiveness is practically endless honestly. The most important reward of living in a forgiving mindset is that you will have a stable peace about you and you will notice others wanting you to share that peace with them.
As we can see, the Forces of the Mind take some explaining to understand. I like to break them down into parts to make them easier to understand because they are complex. Values can usually be summed up in decent one-liners but when we attempt to do that with Forces we end up with part truths and not the full picture. Adding to the confusion around them while minimizing how powerful they are. There are a lot of buzzwords in our society and the Forces of the Mind are getting that treatment too. I have even seen people say, “It’s ok, I forgive you,” with a snarky or snide tone. Forgiveness doesn’t operate like that and neither do any of the other Forces of the Mind.
They come from a place of indifference or innocence within ourselves. A place of purity void of emotion and intention. A place where we can find the power of creation and inspiration. Forces of the Mind are so close to the source of life that they deserve a deep meaningful explanation and exploration into how they work. When we call on the Forces we are calling on that source of life to provide us aid in our growth and betterment as individuals.
This post did get a little long and I am not sorry in the slightest. The next post will be a deeper exploration of Trust and Understanding as Forces of the Mind. I then want to dedicate an entire post to Gratitude.
The Forces of the Mind are just the tip of complexity as we continue the Fundamentals. That is why I built the posts in this order. Each piece flows into the next and lends to the overall explanation. This is all necessary for when we begin to move out of the Mind and into the realm of Spirit. Forewarning, I am a little against the grain and what is being regurgitated at large in regards to Spirit.
Until then, enjoy the journey, and know I feel very fortunate to have this avenue to share what I have learned with you.
Thank you for reading and I wish you a day full of grace and beauty.
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