You Can Only Open Your Mind
The minds of others are outside your power.
I don’t know about you, but one thing that drives me batty is closed-mindedness. It’s especially frustrating and infuriating when you see someone holding onto something illogical, unreasonable, hurtful, and harmful out of fear, ignorance, distrust, uncertainty, or some combination therein.
Then, to add insult to injury, it doesn’t help that political parties, business leaders, religious leaders, would-be demagogues, and others weaponize that fear, ignorance, distrust, uncertainty, or combination therein. The divide and conquer approach is too pervasive, and it’s creating wider and wider, unnecessary gaps in society and how we interact with one another.
I would love to do something, anything, to change this narrative. What can I do to wake people up, show them that kindness/compassion/empathy aren’t weaknesses? How can I help people open their hearts, souls, and minds to abundance?
I can’t. Plain and simple, I cannot open anyone else’s mind.
What can I do? Keep my mind open and share what I get from working with that.
Nobody is one thing only
Every single person on Planet Earth, all 8 billion of us, is unique. What’s more, not a single one of us can be one thing only. We’re all blends of good and evil, rich and poor, short and tall, wise and idiotic, and so on.
The smartest people on the planet sometimes do incredibly stupid things. The most foolish, idiotic people on the planet can have moments of brilliant, genius insights. Wisdom and intelligence are different stats and hit in different ways, at different times, in variable situations.
No matter how set in stone and unchangeable a mindset might appear, it can, will, and does change. How many politicians have switched parties because they found the machinations of one easier to navigate than the other to gain power or freedom?
Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Everyone, everything changes. It’s inevitable, unavoidable, and why nobody is one thing only. Change, coupled with environment, circumstance, influence, and a multitude of other factors internal and external, is why we’re all a blend of good and evil, rich and poor, short and tall, wise and idiotic, and so on.
Closed minds are a combination of beliefs and values rooted in the subconscious – tied to habits/rote/routine – and inactive or willful conscious awareness.
The choice to be open-minded – or not – is a conscious one.
You can only open your mind via conscious awareness
There is an unfathomable resistance to open-mindedness today. The notion of “wokeness” being dirty, somehow impure, and countercultural makes no sense. Why? Because the opposite is being asleep at the switch.
Granted, many of those “in power” love this idea. That’s because it keeps people living subconsciously, which makes them easier to sway. That’s why they push the notion of “woke” as bad. They know full well that open minds will resist them and choose against them.
The problem here is that you can do nothing whatsoever to show people who believe this nonsense why and how it’s counterintuitive. Or, more specifically, you can’t wake them up and open their minds.
What you can do, the only thing you can do, is to open your mind. Keep, maintain, and open your mind every day.
This is never a one-and-done proposition. Shit happens that will close your mind. Sometimes that’s to protect you from pain, suffering, hurt, and fear. Reacting to closed-mindedness can actually close our minds, too. Things look incredibly black and white, and us versus them in these situations.
You choose and decide to open your mind via conscious awareness. Rather than allowing your subconscious mind to do the driving, you work with your inner being, your thoughts-feelings-intent-approach-actions, in combination with your 6 senses, here and now.
You leave yourself open, awake and aware, not just of the world without but the world within. Which is necessary, because any change that you choose always begins from within.
Influencers come in many forms
People have found ways to make money as “influencers” online. They have millions of followers who hang onto their words, believe in their ways, buy the products they promote, and so on.
Politicians can be amazing, terrifying influencers who convince whole swaths of people to follow and vote for them, even when doing so is against their best interests.
You can be an influencer. How? By keeping an open mind, expressing your open-mindedness, and showing how it empowers you.
Like attracts like. The Law of Attraction, at its pure core, is a law of nature like Gravity and Thermodynamics. When you are empowered and share that with the world via mindfulness, conscious awareness, and open-mindedness, it shows. It draws people to you.
By working on keeping an open mind, you can display how that empowers you. In truth, everyone desires to be empowered, but nobody teaches us how that happens. What’s more, we’re frequently directed to look for empowerment without. And that’s bullshit, because the truth is that empowerment comes from within.
You don’t need a platform like TikTok or Instagram to be an influencer. With an open mind, you gain an open heart and an open soul. That turns you into a beacon. Beacons draw people to them. And though you can’t open the minds of others, your open mind can show them potential and possibilities. That’s worthwhile, especially today.
What do you do to find, maintain, and keep an open mind for yourself?
This is the seventh-hundred-third (703) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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