Awakening our Values.

A short article by Mick Quinn, Irish author of The Uncommon Path.


Often we declare a desire to change with great gusto and conviction, but find that within a few days or weeks that enthusiasm has almost completely dissipated. Why is this so? How can we sustain great choices on a consistent path of growth and development?

The core of the issue is that, although our intentions are great, the way in which we use our values to direct those intentions is unknowingly subject to both individual and collective conditioning; hence, the purest objectives are misdirected by that hidden habituation.

EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Conditioned values are sufficient for a successful material life; however, they cannot guide an intention to consistently express your full potential.

Intention is classically defined as the aim or anticipated outcome of an action. Values are core psychological structures by which all major decisions are made and, as such, they greatly influence your world. Your values guide your intentions to fruition.

Therefore, your intention to awaken your full potential will be completely ineffective without a supportive decision-making process. Though you mean well, conditioned values and the way in which they are arranged can't support or manifest a pure intention to awaken your full potential. To sustain the conditions for discovering and expressing your full potential, your decision-making structures–your values–must be capable of influencing and guiding a pure intention.

By simply looking at your current life situations you can uncover much evidence of what you value and of what is important to you–you can determine what your current values are by simply looking at the tangible evidence for them in your life.

EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Conditioned values cannot direct pure intentions, because conditioned values and awakened intentions are drawn to parallel outcomes.

The most humble of intentions would be to awaken to authentic joy, also known as freedom.
If your values are arranged to ensure a productive career path, and you also have an intention to awaken authentic joy–it will be difficult for you to manifest the latter without first being clear that your values are capable of directing that intention. It is only when you are clear about your values and their arrangement, that you can create a direct link between your intentions and such an awakened intention.

Therefore, to stabilize the conditions for your pure intentions and to yield changes that "stick," you must reclaim consciousness that will otherwise be consumed in a continuous struggle with ego-based outcomes.

EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Liberation from the effects of hand-me-down values is the outcome when those values are rearranged into one conscious group.

The primary value you select for this single hierarchy always represents your interest in awakening your full potential marginally more important than other interests in your life. Making a decision-an awakened choice-based on such a conscious primary principle will produce an awakened effect. This sustains the conditions for authentic joy by reclaiming your awareness that would ordinarily be lost in on-going attempts to resolve the troubling outcomes of ego-based choices.

This new arrangement also supports all other necessary aspects of living because your subsequent values can include money, security, family, love, learning, etc.

By making all major life decisions according to a primary value, such as freedom or evolution, the intended outcome will be realized regardless of the circumstances surrounding the decision. You will discover that awakening authentic joy is not dependent on options or outcomes, but on how consistently your intentions to live such a life are directed by a conscious primary value.

Eventually, it becomes clear that you are "choiceless", and you will approach change, transformation, and the evolution of your own consciousness with unbending confidence, because you now know that your intention to awaken to joy is always going to be your outcome.

EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: Conditioning, on the other hand, segregates values into distinct and concurrent groups - related to career, home, family, friends, hobbies, etc.

For example: A working mother would have different groups of values for decisions about her career than she would for decisions about the welfare of her children or her own spiritual development. The struggle experienced with major life decisions and their subsequent outcomes is the result of the conflict between all of these groups of principles.

This arrangement ensures that concealed conditioning remains in firm control of your life. You regularly "put off" big decisions, vacillate between your options, "run scenarios," or seek the opinions of others. Then, having made a decision, you often "change your mind”. Frequently you will "shop around" for opinions until you hear one that you think is the "right" one. At other times you are unable, or unwilling to follow through on the choices you made because you realize they were not "the best ones" you could have made. These are all side effects of choices that are being influenced by multiple and concurrent groups of values.

Because most of us are not aware of the existence of these multiple groups of values, we experience great anguish and confusion in times of making important choices.

An awakened person makes major life decisions with great clarity and confidence and without any fear that a decision may ever need to be "revised."

Are you ready to be choiceless?


© 2008 Mick Quinn, All Rights Reserved
Mick Quinn is the author of The Uncommon Path and Poder Y Gracia and the founder of Choice for Enlightened Living Foundation. Mick's work is quoted in The LA Times, Yahoo!, CNN Living, and Woman's World. Gary Renard, the best-selling (Hay House) author said this book is "informative and gripping". Raquel Torrent – Psychologist and founder of the Spanish Integral Association said, “Mick Quinn’s style is clear and direct - like silence making music”. Mick lives in Utah with wife Debora. For upcoming events visit: www.mickquinn.com