Affirmations are a primarily second reality technique of asserting that something is true in an attempt to make it so.
I am not aware of any first reality equivalent, though getting psychological therapy could in some cases be viewed as similar.
In second reality, affirmations are another variation of the limited personal conscious mind working to change the much more powerful personal subconscious/unconscious mind.
In awakening third reality, affirmations reflect awareness of the universal.
A typical form is:
I am _________.
Night tape examples:
I love life. Life loves me.
I don’t practice affirmations on any systematic basis, but sometimes use them when trying to quiet my very busy monkey-mind to get to sleep.
My use has evolved somewhat over the years.
I started with the standard subject verb object format, but found that my strong reality-checking made standard counter-factual affirmations very uncomfortable and probably counter-productive.
Some time ago I thought that a simpler subject verb form with no object would be better.
Some time after that it occurred to me that keeping “I” in the thought tended to limit my thinking to my personal self, so I switched to just an action verb. Affirmations without the “I” also bypass the serious disbelief problem of classical affirmations—they no longer require suspension of disbelief because they are no longer making statements contrary to current beliefs.
This led to affirmations such as:
Love
Accept Give
Learn Teach
Earn Share
Prosper Thrive
Create Accomplish
Heal (because I could not think of an active verb form for “be healthy”)
Looking for action verbs for affirmations led me to notice that I don’t know of any active English verbs for joy or happiness.
I also realized that my insistence on action verbs was another holdover of earlier realities and the original linguistic structure of affirmations I had seen.
The verb “heal” includes implicit meaning of having imperfections to fix.
My latest thinking on affirmations is that nouns for states of being are a perfectly acceptable addition to action verbs.
Health Joy Happiness
In a sense, this now returns to the passive verb of the original “I am ____” format, but now from a universal source perspective (I AM), not limited to a personal “I”.