Aspiration

About the Word

To aspirate means to breathe. At one time, that was the most a living being could strive for—to continue to breathe! However, as eons have progressed, it became possible to hope for more.

In breathing, the diaphragm expands, taking in air, and contracts, expelling waste gases. Aspiration is about expansion of self to include more nurturing things, and contraction to expel that which has served you and you need to release.

As you breathe, your body maintains, grows, and evolves. If you stop breathing, those processes stop, as well. Aspiration therefore also implies the maintenance, growth, and evolution of your spiritual self as well.

At A Glance

The Solar Plexus marks the top of the diaphragm, a ridge of thick muscle that pulls and compresses the lungs and thus makes breathing possible.

Because you breathe for maintenance, growth, and evolution, and these activities are best achieved through goals, the statement of this System is I WILL, associated with the Intentional Field and Intentional Inner Aspect.

Importance of Aspiration

If you do not maintain, grow, and evolve, you are dead. Aspiration, then, from its most basic meaning of breathing, through to its spiritual aspects, is required for you to continue to exist as a fully-conscious being.

You maintain, grow, and evolve through the use of aspirations or goals. You choose, either consciously or unconsciously, certain maintenance goals (I WILL have dinner), growth goals (I WILL learn how to cook), and evolutionary or long-term goals (I WILL become a master chef). You can be one whose goals are consciously chosen and work together; or you perhaps have whose goals which are contradictory and prevent each other from being achieved. Which would you rather be?

I WILL

The active intelligence that creates statements of Aspiration is in the form of I WILL. These are statements of observation regarding your goals and ability to achieve them.

I WILL comes in a variety of forms. I WILL statements are made which apply to the Intentional Inner Aspect, the Intentional Field, and the System of Aspiration. Inner Aspect statements refer to the manner in which your will (purposes) are carried out; Field statements refer to short-term (maintenance and growth) goals, and System statements indicate long-term (evolutionary) goals.

Examples

Inner Aspect

The Fifth Inner Aspect is that of being Intentional. This is implemented as the associative cortex of the brain. This section integrates information from many sources, processing that information, and formulates and carries out responses.

Put in less technical terms, the Fifth Inner Aspect takes information from a wide variety of places—for example, the news in today's paper, how you feel, your long-term goals—and decides what you should actually do.

If your long-term goal or purpose is to lose weight, and you have an appetite for a big omelet this morning, and the paper says that eggs are high in fat, your Fifth Inner Aspect may direct you to have a grapefruit for breakfast.

Or, if your will is less focused on your long-term goals, you may have the omelet anyway—perhaps with buttered toast and a side of Danish.

Some people seem to start with the Intentional Inner Aspect. That is, they subjugate their own will to the wishes of their family, spouse, church, or political party, choosing goals that do not conflict with the wishes of these others. Others may allow just their emotions or minds to make their choices (I WILL DO what my heart tells me or I WILL DO the logical thing).

Exercise 5-a

Write down four Inner Aspect I WILL DO statements (referring to the way you plan to achieve your goals), Mark statements that indicate likely achievement with I+. Mark statements that indicate unlikely achievement with I-. Neutral statements may be left unmarked.

Unhealthy Inner Aspect

The most obvious sign of an unhealthy Fifth Inner Aspect is the self-sabotaging of your own goals. For example, suppose a woman has the goal of a happy and loving relationship with her husband—but somehow, every night, she finds herself cleaning the house so thoroughly and for so long that, when she finally gets to bed, she is too exhausted for conversation, much less physical intimacy. Or suppose a man has the goal of writing a novel, but every time he sits down to work on it, he finds himself spending the allotted time answering his email.

It is also unhealthy to subjugate one's will to another person or institution. ("I'd really like to study languages, but mother says I need a more practical career.")

The words, "Yes, but…" are a pretty accurate sign of an unhealthy Fifth Inner Aspect.

Because your Aspirations are very powerful, they cannot be completely denied. So, if one has an Aspiration that is being suppressed, it often turns up in the form of a daydream. If you are spending more time day-dreaming than doing, that is a sign of an unhealthy Fifth Inner Aspect.

From a psychological standpoint, the most toxic contributor to an unhealthy Fifth Inner Aspect is, simply, fear of change. While some Aspirations involve maintenance ("I WILL remain my present weight the rest of my life") most involve growth or evolution; and growth and evolution are changes. Desired changes, yes; but changes nonetheless, and many people on this planet have a fundamental fear of change that is their number-one foe. Since they often deny that they have this fear, they often mask it by keeping busy with maintenance tasks to the exclusion of tasks that would achieve their goals. Typical maintenance tasks are: housekeeping, auto maintenance, hobbies, answering email, and the biggest general time-waster of them all: television watching.

Please understand that there is nothing wrong with maintenance tasks in themselves. Hobbies, housecleaning, and the occasional episode of your favorite show is good for the soul. It's when these tasks become so consuming that there is no time or energy left to achieve your goals, that they become a symptom of an unhealthy Fifth Inner Aspect.

At an extreme, diseases such as obsessive compulsive disorder are due to poor wiring in this section of the brain. They can conceivably be treated by medication (although a provable drug for this has not yet been approved), or by modifying the contents of the Intending Field (see below).

Energizing your Intentional Inner Aspect

There are no magic bullets to improve Inner Aspect health. Each of the below techniques takes work and commitment, and some may be scary. Think of them as tasks to fulfill your long-term goal of happiness and spiritual evolution.

Identify and release goal limiters

If you have lived your life fulfilling the goals of others, now is the time to stop. This is not as easy to do as to say. The lines of energy that flow from you to the person, persons, goals or purposes you have subjugated yourself to, are very strong. They tend to maintain their own existence. You are the only one who can break them, and the first step is identifying them.

Exercise 5-b

Write down four persons, groups, or institutions that you would hesitate to openly defy:

Consider the consequences of defying them, anyway. Consider what long or short-term goals of yours may defy them. Consider the consequences of living your whole life in denial of your own goals. What is the effect on your personal, spiritual evolution? What is the effect on the spiritual evolution of the other person or institution? Write down your thoughts.

Identify and release time wasters

As years pass, we tend to develop bad habits that eat away at our time, leaving less for achieving our goals. Some example time wasters are:

• Misplacing your keys
• Misplacing your eyeglasses
• Misplacing the item you're working on or with (your novel, knitting needles, car, etc.)

To eliminate time wasters, identify the ones that most commonly afflict you and work to develop more positive habits that will eliminate them. For example, if you commonly misplace your eyeglasses, create a special home for them somewhere in the house and make a point of always placing them there. Or, buy a sports ribbon for them and keep them around your neck. It doesn't matter what technique you use, as long as you pick one and apply it.

Develop and adhere to time-management disciplines

After years spent in unconsciously finding ways to avoid achieving goals, most people find they have not developed their time-management skills. (After all, leaving these skills undeveloped is a great excuse for avoiding change!)

The first step in effective time management, is becoming conscious of time. How long does it actually take you to brush your teeth, answer your email, drive to the store and back? Some people think they have an idea of the answers to these questions—and they are sometimes wrong. We tend to underestimate, sometimes by a factor of three, the amount of time it takes to do simple tasks. No wonder there's no time left in the day to achieve your long-term goals!

Exercise 5-c

Write down the amount of time you think it will take to do various maintenance tasks. Then, over the next few days, actually time yourself and see how accurate your estimates were.

Click here to load the questionnaire page. You can then print it, and fill in the actual times as you measure them.

Develop goal-fulfillment disciplines

These are disciplines that help integrate your long-term goals, immediate tasks, and identify and release time wasters and goal limiters. We'll examine a few of them later in this workshop.

Intentional Field

All the fields contain information in the form of a matrix or in patterns they contain—that's what a field is, after all. The Intentional Field contains patterns for the tasks you plan to accomplish, or tasks that are frequently executed, as well as saboteur tasks and time-wasting tasks.

It is good to take an observer's viewpoint and watch yourself as you go about your daily tasks. Try to spot which tasks are maintenance tasks (eating, bathing, dressing), which promote your long-term goals (attending classes, practicing the tuba, reading about web site design). Also look for time-wasting tasks (spending excessive time on hobbies, watching TV shows that don't actually interest you) and saboteur tasks (anything that prevents you from performing tasks that do promote your long-term goals) like hunting for misplaced items, cleaning things that are already clean.

Exercise 5-d

Write down four Field I WILL statements (referring to your short-term goals), Mark short-term goals that lead to long-term goals with “F+”. Mark short-term goals that are ends in themselves, with “F-”. Neutral statements may be left unmarked.

Unhealthy Field

A perfectly healthy Intentional Field would contain only maintenance and long-term-goal-promoting tasks. You will never see one of these, because no one has one just the tasks for achieving them!

What usually makes an Intentional Field healthier or unhealthier, is the percentage of time-wasting or saboteur tasks it contains. Those tasks provide distractions; their purpose is to prevent the achievement of long-term goals.

A Intentional Field can also be weak or strong. A strong Field contains adequate tasks for maintenance and achieving long-term goals. A weak Field does not. Dreams seldom come true without effort and planning.

Another problem related to field strength has to do with the interacting Intentional Fields of two people. A Intentional Field can be too strong. In such a case, when its owner physically approaches someone else, their Intentional Fields interact and the stronger one may overpower the other. This is experienced as an overbearing person, one who gives orders to others for the completion of his or her tasks, often to the detriment of the person with the lesser field, who then hasn't got the time or energy to perform their own tasks.

Since the person with the overbearingly strong Intentional Field isn't likely to perceive this as a problem—after all, it isn't hurting them any—the solution is for each of us to ensure that our own fields are strong enough to hold their own. Only a person with a weak Intentional Field can fall prey to a person with an overbearing one.

Energizing your Intentional Field

To keep a healthy Intentional Field, you must first identify time wasters and saboteurs and work toward eliminating them. (This will be easier after you've identified your long-term goals in the next section; but give it a stab now.) Most people can't attack all of them at once; but, remembering that they are habits, you can work toward eliminating them one by one. Remember to watch for the cropping up of replacement distractions!

One way to find your major time wasters is to keep a time diary. For one day: write down everything you do, when you started it and when you completed it. (You can omit noting the time spent on the diary, since it isn't a usual task.) You will probably be surprised to note where your time goes. ("It took me how long to take a shower?!")

Then, after having identified your long-term goals, ensure that you have adequate tasks planned to achieve them. (Techniques for doing this will be described in the next section.)

Aspiration as a System

You are a being of intention and fulfillment. You exist to create. To continue to exist, you must maintain your physical self; to make existence worthwhile, you must grow and evolve physically and spiritually. To maintain, grow, and evolve, you must have goals; your goals inspire you to plan, and your plans enable you to achieve your goals.

Exercise 5-d

Write down four Field I WILL statements (referring to your long-term goals), Mark goals that are likely to be achieved with “S+”. Mark goals that are unlikely to be achieved , with “S-”. Neutral statements may be left unmarked.

Unhealthy System

Because you are built to grow, you love to envision goals for yourself. When you do this, that goal becomes part of the Fifth System of Aspiration, encoded into its energy matrix.

But since the Fifth System is just energy, it does not prevent conflicting goals from being placed there. It is quite possible for you to simultaneously have the goal of becoming an astronaut and a professional ballet dancer. The problem is, very few people would have the time and energy to do both—both are professions, and both are full-time jobs. Maintaining both goals will have the effect of preventing either one from coming true.

As the saying goes, You can do anything—but you can't do everything! At least, not in the same time frame.

Another problem some people have is that of ill-defined goals. A person might decide he or she wants to become famous, without giving any thought to how this is to come about. Someone else might want to be rich, again, without providing a mechanism for this.

Any of these conditions can lead to the symptom of Dreams don't come true.

If the Fifth System is very weak, a person might feel no motivation for creating goals at all. This is a symptom of depression, and should be treated as such.

Energizing your System of Aspiration

Today would be a good day to examine your life's goals and re-evaluate each. So would be tomorrow, and the day after. This is an exercise that should be done regularly. Your aspirations are among your most important assets; it follows that they should be consciously kept, sometimes reworked and always cared for.

When you examine a goal, ask the following questions:

• Is it a positive goal? (I WILL BE well, not I WILL NOT BE sick)

• Does it not conflict with any other goals?

• Is it defined clearly enough that I can create a list of tasks that would lead to its achievement?

• Does the thought of achieving this goal fill me with joy?

• Am I willing to devote the energy required to achieving this goal?

Only if the answers to all these questions is Yes! should you hang on to this aspiration. Otherwise, gently thank it for having served you in the past, and let it go.

Remember, some of your aspirations may be hidden. They can come from other lifetimes, or traumatic occurrences in this lifetime. That's why this exercise should be repeated often. Also, watch out for the time wasters and saboteurs identified in the previous section. They usually provide hints for hidden, often negative, aspirations.

An indirect method of assisting the System of Aspiration is the Diaphragmatic Breath which will be covered soon.

Finding Your Aspiration

Referring to the Systems chart in Workshop Zero, please note that the parabolic plane for System Five extends from a point just at the solar plexus, just below the sternum or lowest bone of the chest..

Integrating the First Five

Now that we have examined the first five Systems, Fields, and Inner Aspects, we are ready to consider how they work together.

Time-Wasters Chart

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Creating a chart of one's personal time-wasters can be a useful way to identify and eliminate the activities that prevent one from achieving one's goals and priorities. A chart can help one visualize how much time one spends on unproductive or unnecessary tasks, such as browsing social media, checking emails, or watching TV. By tracking and analyzing one's time-wasters, one can become more aware of their habits and patterns, and make conscious decisions to reduce or avoid them. This can lead to improved time management, increased productivity, and enhanced personal satisfaction.

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