We live in an ever-expanding universe. Science reveals the universe is getting bigger. It’s expanding. However, our minds and thoughts don’t seem to follow this idea of expansion. We limit this process, and as a result, our thinking and ideas don’t evolve and expand with everything around us.

Instead of allowing our minds to open up and welcome something new (expand), we shut it down and keep expansion from happening.

Things like your cultural upbringing, past experiences, religious beliefs, political ideologies, social norms all play into this limit on your thoughts. Before we go any further, let me be clear, I’m talking about your thoughts and the ways you think. I am not talking about expanding your friend’s thinking or your parents, judgmental uncle, or partner’s thinking. I am talking about expanding your thinking. It’s an individual process that benefits the greater good.

Join the collective consciousness and move it forward.

Part of the universal expansion includes expanding consciousness across all humans. If you take all the thoughts every human has across all time, past, present, future, that’s our collective consciousness.

Think of it as a bubble, and every time there is a new thought, the bubble expands. The bigger the bubble, the more full of wisdom and knowledge it becomes. As individual consciousness expands, it contributes to the growing bubble.

Since we are all part of the bubble, we all have the opportunity to benefit from the way someone else is thinking. We’re all connected in this way and part of an ever-expanding consciousness. When someone next to you thinks differently, it contributes to an expanding consciousness, which benefits you. If you can see how this expanding thought bubble is good, you may become more open to it.

Humanity moves backwards and forwards.

Our growth as individuals becomes stunted when we stop allowing space for expanding thought. As a result, humanity will move backward in our thinking because individual consciousness makes up the collective consciousness. The process can be good or bad. As soon as a mind closes, collective consciousness moves backward, and so does humanity.

You’ve seen what happens when humanity moves backward. It results in war, disintegration, judgment, intolerance, injustice, pain, and a lack of love, acceptance, and understanding.

When situations like these happen, it’s because we limit our thinking. When enough people limit their thinking, it affects the collective consciousness.

But it isn’t only global catastrophes that are affected. Limited thinking will affect your family, community, and relationships. So there’s more at stake from limited thinking than you might have understood because it affects everyone.

Being open-minded or closed-minded is a choice, not a sentence. You get to decide for yourself what expansion you’ll allow. I have three ways to help you expand your thinking. They are not a complete solution, but they are a great starting point.

The first way to expand your thinking is to listen without preconceived ideas.

Our lives are shaped by past experiences, which in turn form our opinions and beliefs about the world. We perceive how things are, and when we listen, we filter what’s others say through our limited perception.

Most of us don’t know how to listen. We know how to filter. Listening without preconceived ideas means that you hear what someone is saying, and although it’s in contrast to your perception, you recognize that contrast implies expansion. Expansion leads to more awareness for everyone. Some people call this process enlightenment or awakening.

When you allow someone’s thinking to expand to a place beyond where you are, that only benefits you because it brings a greater collective awareness to the collective consciousness.

The second way to expand thought is to be in tune with your intuition more than your ego.

(You can go deeper on this topic in episode 17.) It’s important to be more in tune with your intuition because it brings awareness of ideas for the greater good, leading to personal growth, development, and improvement. Your personal evolution helps humanity move forward.

Based on your limited past experience, your ego will bring ideas, beliefs, and thoughts. So when you stay within that limited experience, you are not expanding your thinking. Learn to listen to your intuition more than your ego.

The third way to expand thought is to remove the meaning that you’ve attached to thoughts.

We are all meaning makers. (Learn more from this blog and podcast.) We assign meaning to everything, including the beliefs of others. However, the meaning you apply isn’t necessarily true for that person unless they have given the same meaning to it.

Just in the same way you attach meaning to everything in your life, including your thoughts and beliefs, others get to do that as well. When something comes into your life that you don’t understand, you’ll want to attach a meaning to it for the other person (because you think your meaning is the right one,) but remember, they get to attach the meaning of their choosing.

Expansion of thought is the way forward.

Whether you call this process of expansion enlightenment or an awakening doesn’t matter. The most important thing to focus on is doing the work to expand your individual thinking. In your expansion journey, you’ll find fulfillment, purpose, and love.

This work requires you to sometimes get okay with things you’re not okay with. That isn’t easy. It requires you to extend love to others when you don’t think they deserve it. It requires you to stop trying to control everyone and everything and focus on your expansion of thought.

As you expand your consciousness for the greater good, you’re contributing to expanding our collective consciousness and helping move humanity forward.