There’s just a day or so to go before the special Clarity-only two-thirds discount expires on Jennifer Shepherd’s
Why Most Affirmations Fail, and The Four Building Blocks of Successful Affirmations. Just to remind you – this page will disappear on or after the 17th.
[Edit: it’s disappeared now the sale’s finished. But you can still get the book from here.]
I wrote about this one when the sale was just starting – how it’s lucid, enjoyable to read, and abundantly practical. Which all makes for an excellent book about affirmations, but doesn’t answer the question that comes naturally to the sceptical mind: what good are affirmations, anyway?
Speaking of sceptical minds… when I was first reading through this book, and finding my ‘affirmations-are-hooey’ prejudice starting to totter, I turned to Yi before I allowed myself to get too carried away with Jennifer’s writing.
Question: What good are affirmations?
Answer: Hexagram 31, Influence, with no changing lines.
A while back, I asked Yi about the relationship of inner life to outer experience, and was given this wonderful picture of inner life going to meet the world like a suitor galloping out to join with his bride. Since then, there’s been a reading at the I Ching Community where someone asked Yi to define wisdom, and was given Hexagram 53, Gradual Development: the evolving relationship, growing into union.
This reading is part of that same story, of spiritual growth as a kind of marriage into life. 31 is the traditional hexagram of attraction between the sexes, and of engagement. You might say affirmations are for falling in love.
More generally, this hexagram’s about any experience where you open up to influence. It might be the influence of another person, or an inspiration or idea: in any case, Hexagram 31 means you’re open to be moved by it. It seems to me that affirmations are a way of opening, making yourself available to the possibilities you affirm.
It’s more than that, though. LiSe noticed, some years back, that the name of Hexagram 31 is interchangeable with the name of a city the Zhou kings had built specifically for the offerings to the spirits. It allowed them to keep this vital relationship both open and pure, marked off from daily life. It seems to me that this is also part of Hexagram 31: creating a specific place to welcome influence. There’s a lake on the mountain; the noble one accepts people with emptiness – but this is receptivity with a rock-solid foundation. The water doesn’t just flood everywhere.
It occurs to me that we’re always ‘affirming’ something, whether or not we make a ceremony out of it. Now I’m getting more observant of my own inner monologue, it’s positively scary how many times a day I tell myself I’m an idiot. Making a distinct practice of affirmations doesn’t so much introduce something new, as create a defined space for what we were doing anyway, consciously or not: it builds a city for the spirits.
Of course, there’s plenty more to be said about this reading – but I want to get this message posted while you still have a chance to get the book for $9. One last thing, though: it’s certainly significant that this is an unchanging hexagram. The practice of affirmations – and knowing how to do it effectively, which is what Jennifer’s book is for – will open the door and create the space. What follows is left wide open.
There are lots of things that we believe ourselves to be – our self-images. Affirmations are used to (more or less) replace self-images that we believe are bad for us. With affirmations, people try to make themselves believe something about themselves.
I used the word “believe” three times here … belief is not the same as truth. In my view it’s a bad idea to believe things when you are capable of examining what the truth of yourself (20.5) really is. Even worse is to deny your capability of examining the truth, and treat yourself like some machine that needs to be programmed, by trying to make yourself believe something.
Much better is to develop the capability to see what’s really there.
I might have agreed with you a few weeks ago – or at least thought that affirmations were bound to set up an inner contradiction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ that would make them worse than useless. But between Yi and Jennifer, I’m rethinking.
What you say about seeing ‘what’s really there’ – that depends on the idea that some things are absolutely, definitively there, and some things are just as absolutely not there. So we can either see the truth, or affirm something that’s not the truth.
But what if the truth is more plastic? What if from moment to moment a whole lot of what we tell ourselves is ‘just how things are’ (“Concentration span of a goldfish, that’s me” or “I’m not good with money” or “I’ve always been shy”…) is actually just made of potentials?
Anyway – what do you make of hexagram 31, here?
This is my text for the Image of hexagram 31:
Over the Mountain there is Mist: Being Affected.
The noble one, by being empty, accepts people.
I’m taking a slightly different perspective for interpreting your reading. I see the affirmation as affecting you, rather than making you more open to being affected. Not every affirmation is going to make you more open: what if you affirm “I’m closed to being affected by people’s negativity”? That doesn’t open you. Every affirmation does however affect you.
In this context the Image of 31 is particularly interesting. The noble one is “empty,” which is about not being prejudiced, not having a preconceived image of things, being open. When images and self-images are present, you are not empty. An affirmation is just another image, it just fills you up some further, it is the opposite of being empty.
Let me give an example of “what’s really there.” Yesterday I found an advertising e-mail in my inbox, from an internet bookstore that I sometimes buy from. I was a bit angry about the spam, and sent them a message about it. This morning I received a reply, with some stock answer, that showed that my message hadn’t been understood. I got more angry, and sent them a reply , telling them they hadn’t read my e-mail.
Now this anger didn’t go away. So I wondered what feeling was really there that made me angry. It took me a bit to open up to an actual feeling of being discounted and feeling sad about that. When I had felt that feeling, the anger dropped away.
What if I had instead done an affirmation like “I am not angry,” or “I am not affected by being disrespected”? I then would have had two images: one of being discounted, which would have been pushed a little further into my unconsious (still affecting me, by the way), and an image of not being affected by being disrespected. Would that have made me more empty, more open? I don’t think so. But my looking into what’s really there did.
Many people do tell themselves a couple of times a day that they are an idiot. Why do they do that? Calling people names is psychologically attacking people, so calling yourself an idiot is attacking yourself. Why would you attack yourself? Isn’t that strange?
What if you start doing some affirmation that effectively denies you’re an idiot, like “I’m an aware and bright person.” I think you’ll find that it only works in the short run to make you feel better, and that after that you’ll either return to calling yourself an idiot, or you’ll find other ways of doing the same.
Now if you start observing yourself, to find out why you call yourself an idiot, and what that does to you, you may find all kinds of interesting feelings (that are probably painful). Some of these might dissolve after you recognized them, stopping you from attacking yourself further.
Hi there,
This is Jennifer Shepherd, author of the new eBook Why Most Affirmations Fail and the Four Building Blocks of Successful Affirmations. Interesting discussion here! I thought I’d briefly chime in.
Setting aside the debate over “truth” vs. “belief” for a moment, I’d like to focus on scientific facts that support the idea that affirmations (and mind over matter or intention) do change physical reality.
Some years ago I was researching a book I was working on about psychic phenomena. I lived in Princeton, New Jersey at the time and went over to talk to the guys at the Engineering Anomalies Lab.
They showed me their random number generator machines and gave me all their abstracts and research papers about the power of mind over matter. And they allowed me to experiment on some of the machines.
To clarify, they don’t say that mind over matter exists, because that’s hard to prove in a scientific setting.
However, for some twenty years they’ve gathered data there at Princeton and at other research facilities having to do with how “randomness” stops when a person uses intent to affect the randommness. Which simply isn’t possible if there isn’t a mind over matter connection.
If you flip a coin, it will come up roughly half of the time heads and half the time tails. These random number generators replicate this process. So the computers spew out a random string of numbers, or the image on a viewscreen morphs back and forth from a tiger to a face at an exactly random rate.
These machines are designed to have a human interface. So a human experimenter can sit and focus on the machine and attempt to, say, make the tiger image come up more on the viewscreen than the face. Or the human can attempt to skew the random string of numbers coming up on a computer to skew the numbers higher or lower through intent alone.
They’ve proven that human intention or human interaction DOES affect these random number generators and make them behave in non-random ways. Which isn’t possible, again, unless consciousness has some interaction with the machines and is affecting them in some inexplicable way.
Well, none of it’s inexplicable if you understand the law of attraction
So, bold psychic chick that I was back in those days, I said to all the engineers “Show me your best machines!” And I went around to all the machines and made them do things that, statistically speaking, they weren’t supposed to do. So I was literally changing the results that these random number generators were spilling out through my intention. And you could view it on the data the machines were spewing out.
By the end of the day, all the engineers in the building were clustered around watching me do it.
The data that they’ve been collecting about how these random number generators seem to respond to human consciousness is really fascinating.
They have facilities set up all over the world where these number generators are running, 24/7.
And they’ve noticed some interesting things.
Whenever something “big” happens, an event that seems to have a big impact on the collective psyche of humanity, these random number generators start to go crazy slightly before the event and during the event.
This happened around the 9/11 events here in the U.S.
This happened around the time of Princess Diana’s death.
This happened around the time of the terrorist attacks post 9/11 in London affecting busses and trains there.
So….the machines are reflecting moments when the collective consciousness of humanity is experiencing a “big” event.
Which also makes things interesting. It’s as if those moments are so significant in their impact on our minds and emotions that they register on these machines slightly BEFORE the event…..psychic earthquakes that these machines can physically track.
So….if human consciousness had no affect on matter, the things that Princeton has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt would simply not have happened.
We may still be fumbling to place the law of attraction and affirmations in a scientific context, but if you look at the research going on about human consciousness, the evidence has already been gathered that this is truly potent stuff.
It’s just not talked about on the evening news in any serious way.
I mention Princeton’s research because when it comes to doing affirmations work, instead of just looking at our inner dialogue and examining our resistance points, beliefs, inner truth, etc., (which is all very useful and important by the way!) I think we also need to realize we’re not just whistling in the dark here with some hippie dippie dreamtime philosophy. We are applying a certain “spiritual tech” that has already been proven to have a real impact on physical matter.
In my book I provide extremely specific workarounds to help people move beyond such concepts as “belief” or “truth” and move into a zone where they are truly shifting the reality around them. This doesn’t just include affecting inner states (like creating positive emotions, reduced stress, etc.) but also focuses on using affirmations to actually change the events in your life to things that advance you personally, financially, and spiritually.
When people first approach affirmations work, they’ve usually been taught one of those simplistic “Just think happy thoughts!” approaches that simply don’t work over the long term. My research and life’s work with over 10,000 clients has shown me that a much deeper, more multidimensional approach is what’s required to really take your affirmations past the zone of mere “wishful thinking” and into the zone of true reality creation.
So I’d just like to point out that there are many levels and degrees to this work, and if people aren’t enjoying their current approach, they might wish to look at things in a more complex, nuanced way. That way, they’ll start to see the real “meat” of how powerful and life-changing affirmations can be.
As with other metaphysical tools and techniques, affirmations can be approached from multiple levels. And just like happens with divination tools like the I Ching, the deeper you become involved in with the work, the more you are able to advance your understanding of the truly miraculous field of energy that we all plug into. It’s truly amazing stuff that never fails to make me breathless with possibility!
Thanks for allowing me to contribute my two cents to your dialogue.
Best,
Jennifer Shepherd, aka the Lipstick Mystic
You may well ask what on earth has the activity of flying hang gliders got to do with this, but there is an unusual parallel in whatever we learn and the one about affirmations reminds me of those pilots launching and the wife, or mates, or pilot ground crew would all shout “Go for it”, or something with a positive overtone. I used to say to myself upon launching off sand dunes, cliffs and mountains the old line from Star Wars, “Let the force be with you”, thinking I guess of the Tao, or Krsna Radha, my Gurudev and some of the nicest devotees I’ve met in my whole life, as well as the now many years reading I Xing Guru from Londons’ illustrious newsletters, affirmations are powerful things. Like mantras working on our subliminal levels, and for some unknown reason, just that faith in the repetition of sound of any one or either of Gods’ names, leaves the mind all fresh and revitalised again. Washes out all the dross of trying to hack out an existance in this modern material world we call a home.
I guess tossing coins, counting a pile of randomly seperated sticks, or at the press of a computer, or birth time, or whatever method one finds to gain entry to the oracles’ inner tao of thought, is a form of an affirmation also. Using the energy from the invisible to manifest itself into things we call projects in our own lives. Whatever it is we do. Our path, dhamma, or Tao.
Haribol from THE PETS ASHRAM DESKTOP STUDIO Down Under.
Whatever you think and hold in consciousnes as Being So Outmanifests itself in your Body or Affairs. Consider every thought you think hovers around in your mental atmosphere. These thoughts being about yourself receive the life that maintains them from the feeling that you put into them. The thoughts themselves are but mental forms, but when you think them with feeling of any kind you fill these forms with life and they become a living thing which ever return to you to be fed with more power and they grow rapidly and dominate your mind until they manifest. Voicing these thoughts outmanifests them, for the spoken word is far more potent than thought.
Continued thought: The main troulble with almost everone is that they do not realize how many negative and destsructive beliefs tshey are carring around with them in the subconscious realms fo mind and which creep through into the conscious mind whenever it is free from interest in other things. Until you can begin to study your mind and watch for and note these negative beliefs and refuse them further support, things will remain as they are. So practice daily, stating outloud, positive affirmations and see the amazing differences that occur in your life.
I love the book, so thank you Jennifer and Hilary.
I am with Sharon Williams on this one. I read an article which said that for most people, affirmations can be like putting a small piece of transparent “positive” scotch tape on a whole poster board of “negative” thoughts and feelings. They won’t work unless you become congruent with the thrust of what you are affirming. But when you do think, feel, talk, act in sync, the energy lines up and cannot fail to surge forward in creative pleasure. In truth, you are then simply giving tangible form, by virtue of your inherent creative power, to the intentions you vibrating.
The vision, faith( belief and /or at least the suspension of disbelief) and, I would add, heartfelt gratitude (a magic key) need to be present. Obviously, you might have a challenge if you affirm something like “I own a Mercedes” when there is a old toyota in your garage and no money in the bank. Nevertheless, if you became wholly focused, adamantly refuse all thoughts to the contrary, eschewing your doubts, the oportunities to acquire a mercedes would begin to move towrds you. I think it is easier to start practice with less imposing goals, ones you feel resonant with on some level.
If one can put aside a maynard-g-krebs type knee-jerk reaction to the “new-agey” connotation of affirmations, it is a realm that is excitng and effective.
there was another old tool called the treasure map, which consisted of pasting pictures of what you would like to create in your world and posting it in a place where you see it every day. I have been stunned by the amzing effectivenessof this tool ..and never was the saying “be careful what you wish for” more validthan here. you need to be prepared to accept and act on what arrives because it WILL show up.
When affirmations are steady and persistent, eventually
“All your thoughts break the bonds. Dormant forces , faculties, and talents come alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever imagined” (the author of that statement eludes me)