Heart Propaganda-Debugging Your Operating System
by Carlo Ami
Like our computers, we all have an operating system. Think of your body and brain as part of your hardware. Think of the mind as housing your data files and memory. You might also consider, for a moment, that harbored in your heart is a great anti-virus program, something that can clean up incorrect or polluted data.
All your life you have been inputting data into yourself: experiences, emotions, assessments, and the judgments of your own self and of others. Much of the input has been false data that has polluted your hard-drive, that part of you that stores your beliefs, your understanding of what is true. Whether innocently or purposefully, the institutions in which you have placed your faith have been feeding you data about yourself and your world that is often false. The truth about the most important facets of life---who you are, why you are here, and what comes next when this life is over---has been corrupted.
Most of our religions on this planet feature a wrathful, commanding and judging god who can be very unhappy if you break “His” rules or if you happen to have chosen the “wrong” religion. Most religious propaganda is very unforgiving. If you mess up, you could end up frying forever on the rotisserie of some god’s eternal barbeque pit.
While heart sense might tell you that the purpose of any worthy religion would be to unite and empower people, most religion does exactly the opposite of that. So many hold onto religious scriptures as the word of some omnipotent god when the truth is that most religious scriptures as we see them today are the product of men with an agenda that is spiritually blood-sucking. The only reason people hold onto believing in a wrathful god is fear of that same non-existent god.
Likewise, we would prefer to see our governments as institutions that protect, respect and serve us while the reality of it is that most of our governments act in direct opposition to their originally-stated intention. In the United States, our consitition is in tatters. It is government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. We have allowed their propaganda to keep us collectively docile, sleepy, and powerless.
Our religions and our governments tend to be very much like the human ego: judging, condemning, confused and afraid of losing their sense of power. The input of faulty data into our personal operating systems, repeated frequently over the course of our lives has resulted in the reality of our not thinking too highly of ourselves, and in our not having a lot of faith in a better future. For many, life is something to get through, to tolerate, and is often seen as probably a punishment for not living consistently with some moral or religious doctrine.
The mechanism of any propaganda is repetition. Our religions, governments and media know this truth and how effective it can be. It is now up to us to more and more consistently employ the secret weapon of Love: Heart Propaganda. Being in touch frequently with what I call the Propaganda of the Heart is a fruitful path to a more enlightened you and a more enlightened world.
Disavowing the faulty input of religious, governmental or media propaganda does not work. There is something strange but very true about the workings of the human mind: When it is fed data that has a negative word in it (“stop smoking”, “quit nagging”, “not do drugs”) the output of our inner computer is anxiety. Affirming what we do not want can make us feel a little crazy. When one thinks of something that one doesn’t want, one is still picturing what that thing or experience is. This is a form of self-torture, a hallmark of futility and confusion. Please use your “pause button” and ponder what has been expressed here so far before continuing to read this article.
The human civilization sits largely asleep at a crucial crossroads in its history. We have slugged along our collective path in a state of ignorance about what is important, about why we are here.
Most of us do not know what true power is. We do not understand that we have defined it as something totally other than what it is. Many see power as the ability to manipulate others, to dominate, to instill fear in others. One cannot truly evolve until one sees that true power is based in love and respect for self and all other creatures.
Think about it: Who are you? The heart will tell you that you cannot be your body. The body is obviously quite temporary in nature and has all kinds of challenges, demands and breakdowns. You cannot be your mind, either. The mind has all kinds of obviously idiotic demands and constructs.
To put it simply: It helps to conceptualize who you are as some combination of heart and soul. Operating with this as a belief can be very productive in all areas of your life.
I see my soul as infinite and fully connected to everything. It lives forever. There is no book that can convince me of this, no charismatic speaker who can instill this belief in me. I just intuit it. I trust my intuitive self.
If this is true, I have no reason to ever fear. Of course, that has nothing to do with the motivation to be prudent. It’s not that I fear running a red light; it’s that I am present and wise enough to intend to do things that preserve my life. Please stop here for a moment, and ponder that idea.
So let’s get back to how to move beyond the bugs in your operating system. Just as the propaganda—often “bugs”---of the world have corrupted the “hard drive” of your operating system, the propaganda of the heart is capable of debugging that system, cleaning it up.
These are the basic steps you can take to do that:
- Get clear on your beliefs and intentions concerning what is important to you. Envision what you intend for your life to be.
- Create and practice ways of reminding yourself of the importance of these beliefs regularly and frequently. Write down the most important aspects of your vision and read them daily when you get up and when you are ready for sleep. Create a one-sentence power statement that you print and put in places where you will see it frequently. My power statement: I am calm, humble, loving, trusting power now.
- Choose to be more and more aware of opportunities you get to practice these more loving beliefs.
Eventually, you will get to a point when you will have no more use for beliefs of any kind. You will just be.
You are where you are now not because of the experiences you have had in life but because of how you have reacted to these experiences. By utilizing heart propaganda, you can move beyond all the ways of reacting to life that have not worked for you. I urge you to experiment with the ideas in this article as a way of being more kind to yourself, as a way of becoming the more loving being that you are at depth.
*****************************************************************************************
For more ideas and tools on how to use heart propaganda in your life, see the homepage at YourPauseButton.com
