Expanding Consciousness

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”

~ James Allen

All these while of my existence in this life, I have always loved the thought of the expansiveness of our consciousness. It is not just in the spiritual sense of consciousness, but right at the very heart of our earthly existence. As James Allen puts it in his book As a Man Thinketh, “all that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts”. It really is!

Henceforth, my approach and perspective towards life has always been to keep an open mind (and an open heart) and explore all the boundaries (in thought-form) of what I currently know, and then keep pushing them outwards to see how far I (and/or my world) can go. That could very well be why I love academia and research, exploring both the breadth and depth of what we humanly know in our conscious minds.

I am very thankful that I started jotting and blogging down my viewpoints from much earlier days of stepping onto this spiritual journey, for I relish in re-reading the old posts. In them, many hold so much reminders that still hold water today; many others bring much celebration of how far I have come in my awareness and understanding. Yet, not everything has to come from the spiritual exploration during classes or from sitting through meditations.

When we change our thoughts, we change the way we see the world and its events; and as we wear those updated lenses out into the world and experience life, we gain fresh insights and experiences. Some things unfold so naturally that when we look back, things have already changed so tremendously, it is surprising how we even had that kind of past perspectives.

One really amazing example was my first big trip to Europe with Dad. Once I traversed that threshold, my world opened up so much and many experiences became “naturalised”. My Dad is not known to be a religious nor spiritual person, but on that trip, we were visiting cathedrals after cathedrals, all thanks to the architecture/art history geek in me. I am not religious either, but years of academia and practice in the art/architecture/city planning realm has trained my eyes and mind to connect culture, society, and artefacts, and I showed him and talked to him about their (hi)stories of faith and religion from the long long past. It has tremendously bridged our communication, and I can now openly talk to him about spirituality, about ThetaHealing, about ascended masters, angels, all these metaphysical topics that were absolutely unimaginable prior.

There were also the more earth-bound learnings we gained from the trip, small things like not flinching when we are enjoying ourselves. Asian values (or those I grew up with) place quite a lot of emphasis on frugality. But as society evolve and as we live more comfortably, is that still a valid value to cling on to? Not that we splash our dollars on opulence (do note that it is not wrong either), but it is high time we welcome the abundance that we have earned and it is time to guiltlessly enjoy. Life really need not be hard, nor do we need make it hard for ourselves.

We pushed through many cultural boundaries as well, as we chatted about the difference between our Asian perspectives and those that we experienced in that short one month in Spain/Portugal/Netherlands. It interestingly included strolling down the red light district in Amsterdam while breathing in second-hand weed smoke. I remember telling him, “This is how school smells like during exam period.”

Boundaries (in terms of “comfort zones” and the like) are funny things. Once you pushed past them, they never seemed like any big deal thereafter. After that trip, I was pretty much spending a month in Europe every year for work. Once we have experienced something, it kind of gets absorbed into our world and becomes wildly achievable like any other familiar matters in our lives. Guess that is how we broaden our minds, our hearts, our horizons. Guess that is how too we dissolve the boundaries in this world between the self and the other(s). Guess too, that is how we take baby steps towards what feels daunting at first.

Now that you have transcended and grew in your abilities to grasp and grapple with them, are you ready to push forth the boundaries of your thoughts and your consciousness?

Thank you SamuelFrancisJohnson for the background image https://pixabay.com/photos/mountains-mood-expanse-fog-light-4520314/