The sub-conscious mind does not differentiate any information that is presented to it. It does not "think". It simply accepts messages as truth. Imagine if your subconscious mind is continuously being given erroneous information and accepts it as truth without question. We must take measures to use our conscious mind to assess, accept or reject information.Now, I've never read anything about the MasterKey System, but my guess is that I'd probably find most of it one big steaming pile of bullshit. I don't believe that our subconscious rules our lives, and I have had more than one hearty guffaw at the expense of those that believe that wanting something to be true bad enough actually makes it true. I mean, that might how things work in the Matrix, but it just isn't so in real life. Nothing just 'manifests' itself into being because you've rolled it around in your brain.
Now, you can consciously reject information, but if you subject your self to the same bad information repeatedly, you are going to hamper your progress. You see, it is not just what you think about the information presented, but how you feel about it that will determine what you actually manifest. The intensity and frequency of those feelings matters - a lot.
For example, if you are working in an atmosphere where your ideals conflict with the policies and/or procedures, you are placing yourself in a position of having to continuously "filter", and along with that filtering, you are likely experiencing negative thoughts and feelings. It bogs you down and interferes with your personal progress.
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As creators of our own destiny, we have the right and the responsibility to choose who we surround ourselves with. Admittedly, there are some relationships that may be detrimental to your development that you cannot just leave.
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[However], you CAN choose your business partners. You can choose your leaders and you can choose what kind of leader you want to be. So how do you know who to listen to? Who to "hang out" with? It is not always simple.
But there is still a message here that is worth exploring. The first point is this: when information is first presented to us, in whatever form, our brains have a tendency to treat that information as true. Let's face it, that's just basic survival. If something darts towards me out of the corner of my eye, I'm going to duck because my brain thinks I might be under attack -- even if it's just a butterfly passing by my head taking me by surprise. But the same thing is also true of regular everyday information that comes to us. If someone tells me I'm looking fat, I'm going to pause for a moment and wonder just how much progress I've really made in my long term dieting plan. I know that I've made tremendous progress (I've lost more than 100lbs for Christ's sake!), but if someone tells me I'm looking chunky, I'll take pause, just like I would if someone yelled out "fire" in a movie theater -- is there really a fire I need to be concerned about? Until I take the time to sit down and consider the truth of that statement, it's going to sit in my belly, and I'm going to mull over it. The same thing is true when I watch the news, listen to status reports in meetings at work, or listen to my son tell me why his little brother is wearing underpants on his head. Until I consider and review the information given to me, at least some part of me is going to consider it as true.
Which brings us to the second valid point: given our subconscious acceptance of information, it really is important for us to consider our environment for our psychological well-being. There are, unfortunately, some folks out there that believe being polite and respectful of their fellow man is a waste of time or is somehow unnecessary. Those folks don't care if they hurt other people's feelings, because they don't think it's necessary to be nice to other people that aren't important to them. And sometimes they're even impolite to people that are important to them because they have a misguided belief that being 'mean' all the time is fun and liberating, or else they think that they're just being 'honest' because it just popped into their heads. These people are toxic, and even if you learn to automatically doubt the veracity of their statements, repeated exposure will most certainly bog you down.
Think about politics for a moment. If you've got a strong political affiliation, you will have automatically trained yourself to doubt what the 'other' side says. If your candidate says the current administration has decreased health care benefits to you while simultaneously costing you considerably more in tax dollars, then you're going to be skeptical if when hear someone from the administration tell you that you're actually receiving more benefits and your taxes have gone down. Obviously they can't both be right, can they? So, you doubt what you're told by the other side until they prove it to you... even though you're perfectly willing to blindly accept what your own side has told you. You've trained yourself to ignore what you consider a toxic source of information (while still practicing the inherent belief of information told to you by your own side). Now lets say that you're a lifelong Democrat and you've just been hired to do video editing for Fox News. You may not believe a word you're hearing over and over again, but it's still going to wear you down over time. The constant bombardment of pro-Republican sentiment from your co-workers and your work is not going to be pleasant, despite the automatic rejection you've trained yourself to internalize.
So, you have to ask yourself, why surround yourself with people that are just going to grind you down? Why expose yourself to constant bombardment? Life is just way too short to put up with it. Avoid those that are constantly bringing you down -- even at the risk of appearing rude! Someone who is down on you all the time has already exercised an unforgivable rudeness by disrespecting you at every chance. If you choose to avoid that contact by walking away from a dick that wants to stop and have a conversation with you at the water cooler, so be it! If you're 'cornered' in your office by a dick that wants to impart his 'sage' venom from your doorway, it's ok to ask him to leave so you can get some work done. If some jackass wants to whisper snide comments about a lecturer during the entirety of a presentation, get up and move.
It all boils down to this: if you don't want to have to detox at the end of every day, then you need to avoid exposure to assholes whenever you can... despite how difficult that can sometimes be. Eventually they'll get the message. A true dick, especially the arrogant me-against-the-world types, won't care and will simply ignore you right back. But if you're lucky, perhaps -- just maybe, they'll figure out that they need to be a little more polite when in conversation with you if they don't want the silent treatment.
But good lord, what the hell is up with people that think it's ok to be a dick all the time anyway? It's one thing to challenge the status quo, even passionately, but that's entirely different from being a toxic asshole at every chance.
There is a time and a place where you have to stick to your guns and you have to make someone uncomfortable in order to be an agent of change. I mean, let's face it, once people find a groove that they're comfortable with, they're going to go with it because it's easy and comfortable -- even if they're wrong, and even if that position is harmful to other people (e.g. faith healers, morons who refuse to vaccinate their children, etc.). When you point out that they're wrong, you're going to run into a wall of denial because people do NOT want to move from a comfortable position, and they sure as hell don't want to have to admit that they've been wrong. In the face of such opposition, sometimes you have to be exceedingly strident in your efforts to bring about change. But if you truly care, you should do that with facts, evidence, and an actual willingness to help someone sort through those facts when you've presented them.
It is way too easy, and damnably lazy, to simply resort to the short cut of being a dick and start calling the opposition names without taking the effort to make actual change. A true dick seems to be oblivious to the fact that being overly aggressive and confrontational just causes people to become entrenched and does NOT further the cause of logic and rational thinking. Being aggressive and confrontational, without the effort of evidence, only contributes to the problem and does nothing to help it.
And of course, all of this begs the question: is it really worth being serially confrontational in the first place? A true dick is out to correct (or at least point out for the purposes of knocking someone else down a peg) problems that, frankly, are none of his business. Is it really necessary to set your life on a course of correcting the trivial wrongs of others? Is that really a fulfilling life course? If there is any true justice in this world, then these folks are just as lonely and miserable as they are toxic to those around them. Do these people not recognize their own character traits in the movies where the know-it-all-make-everyone-feel-bad-around-me asshole is the villain or the moron who opens the door to let the real monster in? Don't they realize that people don't want to hang around people like that for a reason?!
<sigh> Unfortunately this seems to be a character trait that we can't seem to breed out of the population... although I would certainly be game to give it a try. There always seems to be another whipping post with low self-esteem that is willing to couple with these egotistical jackasses. Oh well. But at least we can continue to ignore them to the best of our ability. We do NOT have to be friendly to them, because they have already demonstrated that they have no interest in such niceties. And they have proven time and again that they don't want our fellowship and comfort because they ridicule and look down on us at every turn. So, let them have what they want. Leave them alone and let them roil in their own self-loathing. Eventually some of them will come around. And for the others, good riddance...
