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Up till now, I’ve been using the phrases “change of mind” and “change of vote” interchangeably.

But the more I observe myself, the more I see it’s more useful to distinguish between them.

I have to back up a bit to illustrate the difference between them.

I remind you of how things appeared to me on Sept. 18, 2018, when I meditated on re-entering my heart to find again the source of the artesian well of love. This would be my second time inside the heart as I had been there before, on March 13, 2015.   (1)

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I imagined myself going down 100 floors and of those 100 floors the physical level associated with the vasanas was metaphorically-speaking “skin deep.” It was at best five floors of the overall hundred, that quickly passed in my downward plunge.

The Self, however, that I ended up encountering was the full 100 stories down and then a trip away, through tunnels until I could go no further.

Now leaving that experience and going back to our distinction between the two changes. In my experience, a change of mind happens in the “skin-deep” layer of “us” associated with the vasanas or core issues.

The vasanas contain our conclusions and decisions vis-a-vis traumatic situations that usually happened long ago. It mandates a certain reaction pattern designed to keep us safe in the future.

That whole realm of upsets, issues, projections and reactions I call the realm of the mind.

If we only change our mind, we’re liable to forget our decisions, forget why we’re departing from habit, and in other ways find ourselves back in the same pattern of behavior.  The change will literally only be “skin-deep.”

But a change of vote happens at a far deeper level. It’s the soul speaking, the one on whose desk the buck stops. When it speaks, it’s part-the-curtains time, no guff, deliver-the-goods time.

***

You can tell the one from the other: A change of mind does not result in an ongoing alteration of behavior whereas a change of vote does.

I can give you an example. I grew so tired of how I felt when I was a grump (the troll under the bridge) that I at last risked ending up a Pollyanna and embraced loving kindness. The Troll under the bridge had not helped. I only felt worse and worse acting out that role and story.

I’d resisted the alternative – being loving and kind – because I associated it with being an empty-headed weakling, superficial thinker, etc. Positivity seemed to want to shut out anything the speaker deemed to be negative. But what was negative lay in the eye of the beholder.

I ended up wanting authenticity rather than positivity.

But I condemned myself to a lack of inner sunshine which at last became too much to bear. I was at that point at this time and, fortunately, knew about changing my vote. And so I did.

And it stuck this time. I chose loving-kindness at a very deep level and have benefitted ever since.

But I noticed today that I still receive every outside stimulus with a suspicious once-over (my grand motif being you can’t trust anyone). (2)  It’s now a leftover from a bygone era.

And, when I let it go, I see that it’s getting easier and easier to do and where I go back to – my default – is ever rosier.

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Footnotes

(1) The first time was March 13, 2015, when I had a heart opening. See “Submerged in Love,” March 14, 2015, in An Ascension Ethnography – Part 1 at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/An-Ascension-Ethnography-5.pdf, and afte

The second was on Sept. 18, 2018, when I had the sight of the Self in the very bottom of my heart, the seat of the Soul. See “We Are, All of Us, Innocent and Pure,” April 7, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/04/07/307247/ and “Archangel Michael Explains What Happened at Xenia,” Sept. 22, 2018, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/09/22/archangel-michael-explains-what-happened-at-xenia/

(2)  See “The Grand Motif,” October 13, 2019, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/10/13/the-grand-motif/