"Are we chanting? Are we declaring truths? Trying to calm our fears? Are we taking words and saying them and saying them, feeling that in that repetition some magic formula is going to get involved and something is going to come to our rescue? If we are we are not maturing one whit." - Freedom Barry, Experience
In case you don't know, Freedom Barry carried on Neville's work for a while. When I heard the extract above from a rare recording on YouTube it brought up several questions and I found a couple of points I have a slightly different viewpoint on. The whole recording is at the end of this post. The sound quality is not very good, but it's well worth listening to.
The first thing I don't agree with is about not maturing one whit. We're always maturing, we can't help but mature because everything has been set up for that purpose. On the other hand I agree 100% when he says that we can do it gracefully or painfully. Once we have started to awake to the truth.
But it was mostly the part about the chanting that had me ask the most questions because although I can see what he's getting at and agree with him about the magic formula part I think he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I see affirmations as good way to action the rudder so that it initiates your ship's change of course. It's a way of imprinting on yourself the new beliefs that you want to adopt. Now that rudder can be pretty rusty and blocked with the beliefs you want to drop so it can be slow going at first. But once the initial inertia has been overcome the change starts to speed up. You just have to keep at it in the beginning and do whatever it takes, including chanting, affirming, and, even better, smiling to operate a change in yourself. Later on, if you really practice the Law and seek the kingdom, these will become less and less necessary as you mature spiritually. In this sense you can gauge your spiritual maturity according to which tools you are using as well as by how you react to things.
For example my eNevillizer app really helped me build up momentum by getting in touch with what I was thinking or feeling about situations, and whether they were in alignment with my objective or not, several times a day. I don't need it any more because I'm naturally in touch with my thoughts and feelings most of the time and so pick up on anything that is off key very quickly.
I no longer chant things like "I feel good" to try to change the direction of my focus - a quick scan tells me that I'm already where I want to be. I do remind myself of the truth on a regular basis because, although I have experienced it, my amnesia is still powerful enough for me to forget it at times. But this is more a question of holding a concept in my mind for a little while than chanting. I did however write out an affirmation at least a hundred times over a period of a month at the beginning of this year. It was for a painful situation for someone very dear to me. I had revised but there was no way of me getting any news about the situation and so doubt would set in. When that happened I acknowledged that I was off the mark, forgave myself, re-visualised the desired outcome and wrote the affirmation multiple times. And it worked not because of fairy dust but through my remaining faithful to the pattern I was providing to the best of my ability and using the tools at my disposition.
Neville didn't seem to think much of affirmations, probably because he knew that if there is no belief to back them they're sterile. For me writing out a simple affirmation that implies that my imaginal act is already a fact is just another aspect of scripting. I am confident that in the future I won't need to script affirmations multiple times if at all now that my understanding has deepened and my imaginal skills have improved. But scripting remains a powerful tool. Why is scripting so powerful? Because there is no fiction! Or rather, there is ONLY fiction!
Combine scripting, visualisation, meditating, and revision, do them on a regular basis and you will see your results improve. Add to that some time wisely invested in reading the Bible or Neville as often as possible and the understanding you'll gain will not only blow your mind it will make the whole process of creating so much easier and fun.
Here is the Freedom Barry recording. He makes a lot of good points some of which I will write about in future posts.
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