Who Cares What Other People Think

When we worry about wearing the “right” thing, supporting the “right” cause, or find ourselves wondering what others think of us, we are feeling the pull and power of the social consciousness. While we all want to fit in, we love the freedom of living from our true expression more. Our true expression comes from our innate wisdom, our natural brilliance that is a part of each of us. In this article we share a few thoughts about the limits of social consciousness and the freedom of natural brilliance.

Understanding thinking requires that we become aware of the thoughts we are focused on. We need to be able to recognize the thoughts that draw our attention so we can make a choice about them. When we aren’t mindful of our thinking, we become lost in our thoughts. A person lost in a forest is unable to identify the path taken or to find the way out. Finding the path allows choosing which way to go. Similarly, once we identify the thoughts we’ve been following, we can choose either to continue on the same path or forge a new trail.

Our social consciousness, or what we know about the beliefs of our society, is stored in our computer mind. That mind is a collection and storage center for all of our experiences and all of the experiences that have been shared with us, consciously or unconsciously. For example, everything our parents have shared with us, everything our children have shared with us, everything our coworkers have shared with us is filed in our computer mind. This information shapes our attitudes, our decision making, our beliefs, and our behavior. The sense that we make of who we are comes out of this conditioning. It is an understanding, our story; it may or may not be real.

Knowing our social consciousness only holds memories, beliefs, and perceptions from the past, can you see how limiting this understanding might be? All the fears, worries, and conce
s of our world are projected on the screen of the social consciousness. When we keep our attention focused on these programs, they create the pictures we see, the stories we hear, and the feelings we have. We are destined to continually repeat the past until we shift our focus beyond our computer thinking and return to our brilliance.

It seems as if everywhere we look the message is “Ain’t it awful—what a terrible condition our families, our politics, our world are in.” War, famine, poverty, racial prejudice, genocide, and homicide are some of the pictures we typically see. Could it be that the prevalence of these images is simply supporting the fact that people generally are not aware of their brilliance?

When we begin to see the possibilities before us, we connect with all that can come from our brilliance. We realize there is hope for healthy, happy relationships and that our homes, our work environments, and our communities can become supportive, productive, and joyful. We step beyond our limiting beliefs and become creators in our world rather than victims. When enough of us create our lives from our brilliance, the world around us cannot help but reflect this transformed understanding.

Excerpted from Activate Your Brilliance by Lynne Hoft and Vivian Hildebrandt. ©2007 Back to Brilliance.