“It seemed like a good idea at the time”

Thoughts & quotes from Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. & Susan Hawkins

Choosing the Positive
We can ask ourselves: “When was I ever trained in the techniques of emotional self-healing?  When I went to school, did they teach me courses on consciousness? Did anybody ever tell me that I had the freedom to choose what went into my mind? Was I ever taught that I could refuse all of the negative programming?  Did anybody ever tell me the laws of consciousness?  If not, why beat ourselves up about having innocently believed certain things? Why not stop beating ourselves up right now?

We all did what we thought was best in the moment.  “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is what we can say about our past actions and those of others. We’ve all been unwittingly programmed without our conscious assent.  Out of our confusion, ignorance, and naiveté, we bought into the negative programs.  We let them run us.  But now we can choose to stop.  We can choose a different direction.  We can choose to become more aware, more conscious, more responsible, and more discerning.

from Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, ch. 4, pg. 66-67

12 thoughts on ““It seemed like a good idea at the time””

  1. Great advice (as usual)! I started the Course in Miracles four years ago because Dr. Hawkins said to…it has a great phrase I borrow all the time: choose again. The quote from Letting Go is the basis of why I choose again.

  2. …and accept that everyone is doing the best he/she can, as everything is happening as it should (and we do not have to engage in the duality of judging)…Peace…

  3. That is because people do not know themselves. They only know their conscious mind. But it is the unconscious mind that runs their lives. It takes a lot of deep spiritual work to know oneself…

  4. Is it normal to blame the ego for every shortcoming, every pit we fall into in life? Seems like we got used to blame the ego, the same way religionists blame the devil for the bad things they do. “The devil made me do it”. I guess the ego only takes advantage of the fact that we do not know ourselves well. It makes its decision based on that and it is what it has to go by. It’s not that the ego is bad. It just doesn’t know any better. It doesn’t have the vision, the wisdom to do better. It can only regret I guess. And because we’re not in control of our lives (hard to control what you don’t “know thyself”) the ego keep running our lives for us. He’s like a rookie financial adviser. How to recoup the control of the ego’s recklessness without having the desire to obliterate him?

  5. Jose–

    If I were to lean on Dr. Hawkin’s teachings for your question, I would recognize the ego is our animal nature. He taught that there was nothing going on in a zoo’s monkey island that wasn’t also occurring on the nightly news. So perhaps a student shouldn’t aim to control the ego, but let it go. If one’s destiny is enlightenment, then one can set an intention towards that and let go all obstacles.
    Kind regards,
    Kelly

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.