Stepping Into Possibility Thinking

Our thoughts really belong to the collective consciousness of the world in all of time.

Our individual minds process the cumulative database recorded on the physical and subtle levels and devise interesting combinations, unique interpretations, and random permutations. When this assemblage of information is startling enough, we hail it as an expression of genius.

The pattern of human thinking is designed to hold homeostatic belief systems. This has great survival value for establishing consensus reality. Our minds love to believe that our particular interpretation of events is true. And, if others disagree with us, it only convinces us that our experience of the world is the authentic one.

We establish the dominance of our world-view through selective filtering patterns. This is why every fresh interpretation of knowledge, every invention, every innovation is met with violent opposition.

In fact, given the remarkable gravitational pull of any established view, it's almost miraculous when a new paradigm claws its way out of the slime of resistance into the clear light of acceptance.

Homeostasis is maintained through two factors: pride and denial. We use the emotion of pride to defend a cherished position and we use the mechanism of denial to suppress anything that contradicts our position. Only when the opposing or contradictory information reaches a critical mass do we acknowledge it.

This resistance to fresh insight is common to everyone regardless of culture, background, intelligence, and educational level.

Yet confronting resistance is another force, an irresistible compulsion to overcome stasis and discover anew. Consequently, what happens is that people and societies do change, but slowly, very slowly, because the dynamism of new paradigms are always slowed down by the drag of old paradigms.

To transcend the built-in limitations of our minds to resist fresh ideas is an act of will. We must choose to question the nature of our beliefs. We must choose to be interested in other perspectives.

When we surrender our view that we know something, when we are willing to entertain the discomfort of an alternative answer, and when we prefer curiosity to pride, we step into the realm of possibility thinking.

Possibility thinking is a heroic act because it allows the future to break from the past. It allows for a flow of new probabilities and outcomes.

Our future depends on those who dare to think beyond the confines of orthodoxy.

Possibility thinking is the child of evolution. It is empowered by hope and vision.




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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life
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An Exercise To Open Your Mind To Your Possibilities

Everything exists twice. First, in your mind. Later, before you in three-dimensional space.

In your mind, then, create a perfect room. See yourself sitting in the middle of it, buried deep in the folds of a huge, comfortable chair that feels as soft as a cloud. See a smile of contentment float across your face.

Closing your eyes as you sit or snuggle in your favorite chair and begin to invent the rest of the room. Fill it up with your favorite things. It might have luxurious furniture, or it might be an art studio, a library, or anything else that would make you feel that you are in your element. Let the room be an expression of you.

Now shape the walls. Do you want brick walls? Do you want to be in a geodesic dome? Do you feel an adobe dwelling would work for you? Choose the ideal shape, form, color and textures of your walls.

Finally, place your room wherever you feel most secure and yet excited. Do you want it sitting on a mountaintop overlooking a breathtaking valley or an infinite ocean? Do you want it in a glass bubble in the depths of the ocean?

Now that you're ensconced in your “cave” begin to project how your life could be.

Imagine what it would be like to have your ideal body.

Imagine what it would be like to be with people you love all day long.

Imagine the freedom to do work or play that you find truly exhilarating.

Surround yourself with the resources that you need to be living your unique and fascinating destiny.

Spend time doing this exercise, luxuriate in it. Make this daydream long and deep.

This exercise will open up your mind to your possibilities.

Do not concern yourself with how you will realize your ideal scene. Leave that to your subconscious mind.

Your task is simply to dream boldly. The details will then become apparent to you over time.

Imagine, just for a moment, if you could create a life-pattern where you could live your ideal day.



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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life
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How To Experience A Richer, Deeper, And Fuller Life

When we choose to move beyond the boundaries of the ego, we choose to step into a different world. We find ourselves above the matrix of conceived causality, alive on a unique plane of experience. Here, much to our amazement, everything happens by itself. Grace, or effortless effort, now define our actions.

Our egoic self is characterized by its neediness. Need arises as an urge to survive. It is, in fact, a pro-survival urge that emanates from the ego. The ego thrives on its own insecurities, finding substance through elaborating its own shadows.

Stepping beyond the ego is an act of recognition. What we are recognizing is that we are more than a person.

What, however, can be transcendent to our personhood? After all, this part of us appears to be all of us.

Life is what is transcendent to personhood, particularity, and isolation.

When we recognize that we are life, an embodiment of the life-force, a marvelous and eloquent expression of consciousness itself, then we transcend the ego. We discover ourselves to be more than our narrow view of ourselves. We find ourselves to be a numinous consciousness that uses a mind, animates a body, and assumes a socialized identity.

When we thus change our conditioned view of ourselves, stepping beyond our identification with our own limitedness and stepping away from our plethora of difficulties, we see that we are the force of life itself seeking greater expansion through experiences.

This elusive concept, once grasped, creates a critical shift in our awareness.

When we acknowledge that we are more than a person, and that we are life in motion, we alter our goals to serve the greater life all around us. The instant becomes for us much more important than ruminating over our lived experience.

When we, as a life-force, as a unit of consciousness, seek to serve life-in-general, we need no longer concern ourselves with issues of survival or unfulfilled wants.

You see, our outflow of service toward all of life creates a reciprocal wave that takes care of our every need.

Those who have mastered this subtle self-transcendence will find themselves living in a whole new universe while still habituating the old, familiar one. Everything will be new and different. Serendipidity and synchronicity will happen all the time and quantum leaps in personal evolution will be a matter of course.



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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life

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How To Gain Control Of Your Life

“The latter part of a wise man's life,” said Jonathan Swift, “is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.”

The awareness to see one's own follies, prejudices, and false opinions is in fact essential to overcome one's psychocultural programming.

But before we discuss awareness, we should look at how we went about assimilating programs that didn't benefit our evolution.

Apart from what we have been told about the nature of reality, we also actively programmed ourselves on what things meant.

Unfortunately, most of our programming was done when we were children. At that time, we did not have sufficient knowledge or experience to sift through the absurd to uncover the profound.

While many of the belief-systems we adopted as children were designed to help us survive, they may have had a deleterious effect on us as adults. Since these programs for the most part arise from the unconscious, we may often find ourselves responding childishly to challenging events rather than summoning our adult power to move through the problem.

As a child, for example, I adopted the belief that if something did not work out for me, my best option was to move on to something else.

This program created failure and frustration in my adulthood.

As an adult, I noticed that this program to negate effort made my life very difficult.

But by practicing sufficient awareness to notice the pattern and choosing to learn to persist in every endeavor, I noticed a critical shift in my life experience.

What I noticed was that when I applied my new decision to persist when things were not going my way that even seemingly impossible things would turn in my favor.

A program, then, is a repeated pattern arising from a previous decision. It is usually one made as far back as childhood. It is an early and immature decision that creates disharmony and dysfunction in one's present life.

Cultivating awareness breaks the cycle of living out decisions made in childhood.

Awareness is noticing a recurring life situation that disturbs happiness and success. It is inquiring into the original decision that set the life-denying pattern into motion. Once a person sees the program that has been silently and almost invisibly running their life, they can redecide how to live their life and organize their experiences in a more meaningful way.


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life

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How To Get Real

“What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real,” said H.F. Hedge.

Ideals arise from our use of imagination.

Our imaginations can create unbelievable worlds to live in. They empower us to make sense of descriptions remote to our times or foreign to our experience.

When reading Plato, we may visit an Ancient Greece we never actually knew; and when hearing a lecture on Quantum Physics, we may see the interaction between subatomic particles even though they are invisible to the naked eye.

Using imagination, Mozart heard silent music and the Wright brothers created a vehicle that could fly through the skies.

Using imagination, Tesla simulated electrical devices that he later brought into physical manifestation.

Einstein considered imagination more important than knowledge.

Our imagination uses what we do know and reconfigures the remembered sense images into something unique.

Imagination more than any other aspect of our minds has created us as an intelligent species and woven a civilized world around us.

Unfortunately, like all other things in this realm of duality, imagination, too, has its shadow side.

The most familiar aspect of the shadow side of imagination is the creation of neurotic thought patterns, such as regretting the past or fearing the future.

Idealism, an aspect, of imagination, nestles in a gray light. The bright side of idealism is that it creates a target to raise us above our present standard. The shadow side of idealism is that we tend to disdain the permutations of reality and create frustrating expectations.

Our idealism turns against us when we mistake our image for reality. When this happens we are caught up in a neurotic loop of perfectionism. At it's extreme, perfectionism is a form of insanity called obsessive-compulsive behavior.

It is when we start to feel that what we are and what we do is “not good enough” that we start to dip into the shadows. Life is messy, flawed, and imperfect, and when we place demands on reality that can't be met then we set ourselves up for frustration, disappointment, and illusory hardship.

The antidote to the extremes of idealism is realism or simply appreciating what is. In a forest, for example, all trees are beautiful, and it is only an arbitrary distinction to say that only trees that are straight are worthy of our admiration. Similarly, in life, many things are attractive, both in nature and in our own man-made world, and it does not benefit us to always draw rigid lines on how things should be.

An ideal is like the horizon. We will never reach the horizon, no matter how fast we travel because it always recedes. However, the journeying does us good. When we can appreciate how far we've come from where we used to be, then we start to benefit from our journey.

Idealism, when tempered with realism, creates a satisfying outcome to any endeavor.

Accepting what is, letting reality be itself, is a beautiful thing.

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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life
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How A “Psychovirus” May Be Destroying Your Life

A pervasive sense of low self-esteem, a feeling of unworthiness, is perhaps the most debilitating belief system that you can entertain.

If you feel unworthy, you will destroy hope, initiative, and the power to dream bold dreams.

The very concept of unworthiness arises due to the power of suggestion. When you give value to negative information about yourself and own it, you allow the “psycho-virus” of low self-value to lodge in your brain.

If you are raised in a family or a culture or religion that disdains and denigrates the integrity of your individuality, you may adopt a deep sense of inferiority for not matching some arbitrary expectation or ideal.

This pseudo-identity of unworthiness will then run in the back of your mind much the way a computer virus may be running as a background application. Your only clue to this bug is that you feel lost and “not yourself.”

In addition to self-alienation, feelings of unworthiness also separate you from others. Not only might you have difficulty relating to others but you might also perceive others as threats to your well-being. They, in turn, may consider you aloof, arrogant, or even hostile.

Life is difficult enough and challenging enough without your working against yourself.

While there are many ways you may justify your belief in your sense of not being good enough from not being attractive enough to not earning enough to not being intelligent enough...all these are, in fact, lies that you tell yourself. You choose, out of habit, to make unfair comparisons, condemning yourself for not measuring up to some capricious standard.

Although your situation, your environment, or even your past may seem to be the reason behind why you develop a false identity, these are not the root cause.

The only thing that keeps a negative, false, and self-betraying identity alive is a firm belief in it.

The best way to create an antivirus program is to “quarantine” the low-self-worth virus. You do this by simply learning to love and accept yourself without any pretensions.

When you accept yourself, you can begin to love yourself, and when you feel this kinship with yourself, you can then give up the noxious habit of disapproving of yourself.

Accepting yourself means giving up pretending to be different from how you are; it means giving up evaluating yourself according to some scale you've chosen; it means being good enough for no reason at all.

Loving yourself means saying and doing kind things for yourself, and holding yourself accountable for your own happiness.

Accepting and loving yourself without any conditions or reservations will set you free to live the life that you really want.



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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life
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The Bubble of Prosperity

My life is a bubble; but how much solid cash it costs to keep that bubble floating.~Logan Pearsall Smith

When we appreciate the money that we have--no matter how little, and no matter how simple--we create a vibration of prosperity and an attitude of power.

This theme percolates in our subconscious mind, which is then stimulated to come up with money-making ideas and set in motion ways that we can prosper.

While it is easy to appreciate people and places and possessions, we all feel somewhat challenged to appreciate how we finance our lives. No matter how much or how low our funds, it never seems enough--because there is always more that we need and could use.

Ironically, the less we have and the more we express thankfulness and appreciativeness for what we do have, the more we begin the process of prospering.

Our appreciation opens up doors of opportunity, for it is a catalyst for further financial growth. Our sense of enjoying whatever wealth we possess invites us to venture boldly into more promising enterprises.

Of course the natural tendency when our funds are low and our expenses high is to worry and despair--neither of which do us any good at all.

Experiencing a distraught feeling is a signal for our subconscious to choose helplessness over initiative, apathy over ingenuity, and resignation over hope.

When the subconscious is thus disempowered, we stultify our imagination and rob ourselves of the inner power we need to transform outer circumstances.

Collectively, over time, your general feeling about money create your mental blueprint of how much you want to have in your life.

If your blueprint is set to a low amount, then you'll filter out information about how to improve your circumstances. You'll literally fail to see income-producing opportunities right in front of you. You'll subsist on loans and debt.

Conversely, if your blueprint is set to a high amount, then you'll actively seek out income and you'll see things that other people miss. Your imagination will be alive with the possibility of creative thinking. You'll see money for what it is--a medium of exchange--and a way for you to create new products and services that are revenue generating.

Poor people spend most of their time trying to stem losses, while rich people spend most of their time trying to make gains, but the difference in their blueprints and how they filter information is based on their depth of gratitude for what they do have.

“Wealth,” said Benjamin Franklin, “is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.”


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life
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How To Dance With Life

Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself,and holds a just balance between what he can acquire and what he can use.~Peter Latham (1789-1875)

In the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, right action and right living create a life of harmony and delight.

When a balance occurs between opposing forces, then your life flourishes.

When action is followed by rest, when initiative is followed by reflection, and when willful intent is followed by utter surrender, then you are following a path of optimum power.

I think the most fascinating example of what balance in the cosmos can do is in the story of how the ancient wisdom of the East has merged with modern scientific reckoning.

Six thousand years ago, sages plotted the web and woof of the universe, using esoteric meditative techniques, and today, modern scientists, using unbelievable technologcal probes, have come to the same conclusions about the nature of the cosmos.

A rishi from ancient India and a modern quantum physicist from Harvard university would have a fascinating discussion about how the universe is glued together.

The new balance between East and West, Metaphysics and Science, right-brain thinking and left-brain thinking has revealed a marvelous design to the structure of reality.

Similarly, we as individuals, living in a time when the most amazing possibilities are available, would be wise to take stock of who we are and what we can become and then balance out our dreams with the opportunity for their realization.

Imagine, for a moment, how your life might improve if you were to attain a balance in all your affairs, enjoying optimum relationships, financial success, vibrant health, and an ongoing education about the world.

I believe that when your life is in balance, everything will take on a magical quality. Things will fall into place almost effortlessly. Your experience of being alive will be deeper, richer, and more fulfilling.

Balance is a personal, dynamic force that conserves energy, rejuvenates vision, and harmonizes the disparate aspects of a life.

A person in balance finds a way to maximize resources and minimize pockets of scarcity.

When we can identify what our lives stand for, then we will attain the harmony we need to organize our experiences to be deeply meaningful, uplifting, and gratifying.




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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life

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