The Difficulty Of Becoming Free Of Ingrained Patterns

I think it's obvious by now that it is not "easy" to break free from our tendencies for self-sabotage, inefficiency and tail-chasing.

I've always been an ambitious and overzealous dude. I've always thought I could just take out the axe and chop the damn thing at its trunk. One, two, gone!

Yeah right! I've always had this desire to make everything seem so much easier than it really is. Just break, explode or destroy the damn thing at once! Okay, I'm being redundant.

Anyway, it's just not that easy, isn't it obvious? I mean, if it was, we'd have a bunch of responsible, enlightened, selfless and wonderful human beings embodying the ultimate state of absolute grace. Not so, huh.

Well, I'd just like to explore a bit of the reasons for this. First of all, we seem to be in a closed loop. We have a belief, whether conscious or subconscious and then we have the behavior that represents the belief. If we change the behavior without changing the belief, it's only a matter of time before we manifest it again. In some cases, we'll just manifest it in a different way, but it will be the same thing! For example, a person who feels they are a guilty sinner will go to church and then they'll change church for a reckless lifestyle. Seems to me like they're both the same exact damn thing, unless you have your head in the sand!

The other way is changing the belief but keeping on with the same behavior, so now I'm not a guilty sinner, but I still live a reckless life, because freedom to me means doing whatever the heck I feel like doing. Now you've supposedly gone from believing you're a guilty sinner to believing you are entitled to mess creation up (especially the creation that you are!). Here, again you are in a NEW closed loop.

In the end, it doesn't seem like it's a matter of belief or behavior -- it seems like it's a matter of truth. What IS the truth?

And THIS is what I have found to be most difficult "thing" to find within oneself. A true, earnest desire for TRUTH. I can count with one hand the amount of beings that I know have a true, ripened passion for truth. Well, maybe that's not true, maybe I don't personally know anyone that has a true and ripened passion for truth, except for myself, which you might say might be inclined to respond to by saying that I'm just being arrogant or presumptuous, but it's really just the truth.

In my experience, instead of people being ardently passionate about truth, they seem to ardently loathe it!

Can this passion for truth be manufactured? It seems like it's not possible. In fact, it's not possible. How could you "manufacture" a love for TRUTH? It's a contradiction, wouldn't you say?

BUT... you never know, maybe reading this could awaken something? Who knows? Anyway, I didn't come up with this, but some wise, wise dude long ago said "You will know the TRUTH and the TRUTH will set you FREE."

Good luck! To you and to me!!!