By Raphael Awen

Early on in adult life I was introduced to the creative power of one’s thoughts.

I recall the often quoted saying from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

While my mind agreed with and even latched onto the concept, I found it difficult to practice. The Christian camp I was a part of early on also made this a big focus endeavoring to put together all the Bible verses and sayings of Jesus that promised big leverage in the world of shifting one’s reality by the use of words and thoughts. 

I got excited and on board for a time, but eventually, my focus waned and so did my thoughts. We all tried to police our thoughts along with our words, and even got caught up in policing one another’s thoughts and words and that didn’t go well. The whole thing had the energy of a multi-level marketing rally which we were also not too far from in our susceptibility and our need. 

In the end, what dissuaded my fervor, was the non-relationality of it all. Dr. Phil’s question of ‘How’s that working for you?’, was a question we couldn’t even ask ourselves in private, let alone out loud to one another, for to ask the question, would have been caught up in negative thinking and ‘unbelief’. The price of participation was being non-relational with oneself, and in turn one another. Honest questions were branded a part of the negative thinking. 

It seemed the power of positive thinking could only really work for those who were willing to do it like a machine somehow. In the end, I chose the realness of what I was feeling over the pretense of having it together, even if it was admittedly negative. I wasn’t willing to pave over what parts of me truly felt with a medicative blanket of positive thinking, even as alluring as the promise was of overhauling my life through my thoughts. 

The allure however never really left me, but had to be put on hold till I could find a way to integrate it on a higher level inside of me. There was a lot there I resonated with. I knew we needed to grow up from expecting God to create our future, or to play victim to God for giving us a bad deal. I knew that we are all creators of our own reality. I knew that our thoughts are very powerful creators. I just couldn’t get it all in alignment without sacrificing something vital. Would a prosperous, happy and healthy life really be of much worth to me if I couldn’t feel myself? Would that really be of much worth to anyone for that matter? We pursue dreams because of the feelings we associate with those dreams. What happens when we arrive at living the dream, but without the feelings that fueled that dream? We become dis-illusioned and we feel deluded. 

I have no doubt we’re meant to be illusioned, inspired, full of our dreams and visions, but how do we get there and stay there, in a way that is truly alive?

What if there is something even more primary than our thoughts, meaning ‘what if our thoughts are more of a conduit of creative power than the source of creative power?’

What resurrected this whole realm of awareness for me was the discovery of how primary emotion is over thought. Ralph Waldo, as inspiring as he was, was off in his assumption that thought is what creates feeling, that mechanistic thought can be made taskmaster over the wayward heart and its need to feel. 

I feel all of this resurrecting in me again, this calling to take responsibility for my own world, to take ownership of everything that’s happening in my life and how I’m responding to it or avoiding it. The difference is I see my thoughts as a conduit of creative energy, and that conduit has now become very transparent, allowing me to observe and more importantly to feel the source of what’s in that conduit. What’s the feeling, what’s the need, what’s the pain in that feeling? When I feel that, I no longer have to effort a change in thoughts. Thought takes care of itself, because thought is secondary to feeling. 

Where this gets really interesting is that I don’t have to become an emotion police either, like we did before with thoughts. There’s nothing to police, only things to feel, and feeling happens as a ‘to’ and a ‘from’ transaction inside, me to me, when I feel a very real part of me and its needs and reality. I get to show up for me in an emotive and heartfelt way. 

I also feel my thoughts as a sacred altar of awareness, of feeling, of ceremony, of transmutation where my feeling state is made transparent to me, to my higher heart of awareness, to my Divine Self who is able to feel and heal it all. I desperately need access to all that I’m feeling, not to pave it over with any kind of success formula, that couldn’t and didn’t work for me, thank God!

Our beloved guides in previous centuries simply had no awareness of these deeper truths. These truths are what is arising now for you and I to explore. 

Raphael Awen

SoulFullHeart.org/sessions

I offer a free 45 minute consultation to the SoulFullHeart Healing Process and personal ongoing one on one sessions. If moving into this kind of more is calling to you, please be in touch. Info at the link above.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.  Visit soulfullheart.org for more information about sessions, events, videos, etc.