Soul mirrors/desires

["Martin" <martincosgrove@...>]

Dear all,

I have (very) recently been working on my negative soul mirror which 
(combined with a reply from Rawn) got me thinking that I really need 
to try to change some of my more influential negative traits in 
order to even be able to commit to my IIH studies at all.

I have basically taken a two-pronged approach to this. 

Firstly, I came across a book by a well-known British hypnotherapist 
called Paul McKenna. The book in (typical) pop therapy fashion is 
called 'How to change your life in 7 days'. Now I am always 
skeptical of claims such as those made by that title, but as I 
flicked through the book I saw more than one exercise and technique 
which I thought would be useful to me. The book also comes with a CD 
which contains a 'mind programming session'. I am only halfway 
through the book, but I have found many of the exercises relating to 
perspective and being in control of one's emotions, as well as how 
to 'frame' things in our minds positively and how to associate and 
disassociate from memories, very useful. He also introduces a finger 
posturing technique which helps to link positive feeling to a 
specific finger movement, which sounds to me a little like what 
Bardon introduces in 'Key to the True Kabbalah' (I am only basing 
this on posts by other people as I haven't yet read that book, so 
anything others would like to contribute to that point would be 
appreciated).

The other approach I have been taking is that of simply meditating 
on negative traits and trying to ask my subconscious mind in a 
*positive* way how I can overcome these problems (I also have come 
to realize that we often 'speak' to ourselves in a negative way 
e.g. 'why can't I do this?', 'why do I always mess up?', instead of 
framing the question positively - 'how can I most easily overcome 
this?' etc.)

One of the things I have been thinking about over the last couple of 
days is that we humans seem to be programmed with many many desires 
(some more positive than others, but all desires none-the-less). We 
seem to be by nature inherently selfish. Could it be this 
selfishness which helps to keep us locked into the physical senses 
and the material world? Now, if our desires are all selfish, that 
made me wonder whether the goal should be to eliminate these desires 
or to transmute them instead. Should we not attempt to eradicate 
what is a natural part of us (which could lead to an internal 
battle), and instead turn these desires upwards, towards God, The 
One, The Creator, (or whichever term you prefer)? Then we can offer 
to use our desires (which do contain a lot of power) in a positive 
way to serve Divine Providence, the Universe and Humankind.

Is this the right line of thinking, or should I be looking more at 
trying to just stamp out negative desires altogether?

Thank you,

Martin