There are way more questions than answers here, but there are times during meditation when I enter this clear open space and a sense of knowing the answers to these questions pervades. This feeling fills and inspires my body-mind-spirit and for that moment, I think I know. In all the attempts to describe this experience, I feel that Rumi, the poet, says it best:
Rumi - There is a field
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.
I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Unfortunately, the word ineffable (incapable of being expressed or described in words) applies in this field. These concepts can only be grokked by experience. You must go inside to find that field. I want to share my experiences, but I can only hack away at the English language in utter frustration. Here goes nothing.
First, a little background. I just finished reading “Think and Grow Rich”, by Napolean Hill. It was written in the early 1930’s and the gist of it is that you can and will manifest whatever it is your mind dwells upon. Sound familiar? If you saw the movie “The Secret”, which came out a few years ago, you heard that same theme. In the early 1980’s, my wife and I met David Spangler and read his books and heard his lectures on “The Laws of Manifestation”. His stories of the huge plants that were grown in Findhorn Scotland were fascinating, real-life examples of manifesting reality through thought or prayer. My wife and I have also met Gregg Braden and read many of his books. His “Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer” is one of my favorites. They are all trying to teach us the same concept, that you manifest your reality based on what your body-mind-spirit is thinking and feeling. This idea has been around for millenia. The Bible makes references to faith and moving mountains. That’s a stretch to the imagination, isn’t it? Scientific experiments are currently proving that the conscious mind can affect sub-atomic particles (and therefore atoms). What this proves now is that this ancient teaching is actually true. Why isn’t this actually believed and practiced by the main stream? It is because we are only human. We cannot believe it because our body-mind training from birth is that there are limits to possibility. That will all change by 2012, but that’s another blog.
We all wonder sometimes, “Why did I do that? How did I get here? I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t plan on being here. I always wanted something else.” Most people’s problem is that their conscious awareness has not tuned in to what they are actually thinking and feeling and thus manifesting. In other words, we don’t know what we’re really thinking. But the wisdom of the ages is full of truth and the truth is that we really do manifest the reality that we experience.
What does this have to do with free will? The answer to that question is related to this question, “How do our thoughts and feelings manifest reality?” Wayne Dyer explains this in “The Power of Intention”. He talks about connecting to “The Source”. David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph. D., uses different words in “I: Reality and Subjectivity”. He says the same thing however, that our thoughts and feelings, i.e. our subjective experience, combines with the collective experience of all consciousness to manifest the next moment. He refers to the one consciousness as the “I”.
At one level, this is pretty simple. You alone don’t move the mountain, it is a collective effort, “Thy Will Be Done”. At the same time, you have choices. You can choose in every moment what you wish to think and to a lesser extent, what you wish to feel. Let’s assume that you have free will. How will you use your free will? What choices and actions will you take?
Wayne Dyer has another book about finding out what you really, really, really, really want. I have not read it, but I know that exploring this question is a very powerful and rewarding experience. It has been really easy for me to forget what it is that I really want from this lifetime. It has been a decades-long path to finding out what my soul’s purpose is here in this lifetime. For the most part, I am a very happy man and have most of what I think I want. Here is a most recent example that I wanted to share because it has been so successful that it is just blowing my mind.
Since December of last year, because I will be turning 60 very soon, I have been saying, “My sixties are going to be great!”. This is my mantra. I got this idea from my mother, who told me that her 50’s was the best decade of her life. My 50’s sucked, so therefore, I needed something to look forward to. I have not been specific as to what that meant, just “My sixties are going to be great!”. But over the last 9 months, my unconscious mind has made it obvious that it knows what that means. First, I quit drinking alchohol with no cravings, which is something I have tried to do for the last 30 years without success. My chronic sinus infection of the last 20 years has mysteriously vanished. I have lost 15 pounds. My back problems are starting to dissolve. Why? Because I know that I can’t be “great” when my brain is fuzzy. I know that I can’t be “great” weighing what I have weighed for the last 30 years. I know that I can’t be “great” when my back hurts. All these changes happened without my having to use “will power” to manifest them.
So, here’s the take-away. You can read all those books that I mentioned and come up with a strategy, procedure, daily routing for managing your own free will. I like using wishes. For example, do you ever eat whole chickens? Save your wishbones. Make at least three wishes for different aspects of your life (career, partner, friends, spiritual, health, etc.). Think about them twice a day, morning and night. Assume they will evolve. Hone them, shape them, and run them through your mind throughout your day. So that you don’t forget to think about them, write them down, keep your wishbones in sight, do whatever it takes. After several months, you should start to have a different feeling about them and they should be changing less often.
Ultimately, you need something that speaks to your unconscious mind, because trying to control your will-power with your conscious mind is a setup for frustration. I call it a mantra. Keep it short and simple. When you say it, it should be easily believable. Say it with an intention to eventually fill every cell in your body with that belief. For me, seeing results take months, but the rewards are thrilling. I can’t wait for my 60’s to start.
First, a little background. I just finished reading “Think and Grow Rich”, by Napolean Hill. It was written in the early 1930’s and the gist of it is that you can and will manifest whatever it is your mind dwells upon. Sound familiar? If you saw the movie “The Secret”, which came out a few years ago, you heard that same theme. In the early 1980’s, my wife and I met David Spangler and read his books and heard his lectures on “The Laws of Manifestation”. His stories of the huge plants that were grown in Findhorn Scotland were fascinating, real-life examples of manifesting reality through thought or prayer. My wife and I have also met Gregg Braden and read many of his books. His “Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer” is one of my favorites. They are all trying to teach us the same concept, that you manifest your reality based on what your body-mind-spirit is thinking and feeling. This idea has been around for millenia. The Bible makes references to faith and moving mountains. That’s a stretch to the imagination, isn’t it? Scientific experiments are currently proving that the conscious mind can affect sub-atomic particles (and therefore atoms). What this proves now is that this ancient teaching is actually true. Why isn’t this actually believed and practiced by the main stream? It is because we are only human. We cannot believe it because our body-mind training from birth is that there are limits to possibility. That will all change by 2012, but that’s another blog.
We all wonder sometimes, “Why did I do that? How did I get here? I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t plan on being here. I always wanted something else.” Most people’s problem is that their conscious awareness has not tuned in to what they are actually thinking and feeling and thus manifesting. In other words, we don’t know what we’re really thinking. But the wisdom of the ages is full of truth and the truth is that we really do manifest the reality that we experience.
What does this have to do with free will? The answer to that question is related to this question, “How do our thoughts and feelings manifest reality?” Wayne Dyer explains this in “The Power of Intention”. He talks about connecting to “The Source”. David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph. D., uses different words in “I: Reality and Subjectivity”. He says the same thing however, that our thoughts and feelings, i.e. our subjective experience, combines with the collective experience of all consciousness to manifest the next moment. He refers to the one consciousness as the “I”.
At one level, this is pretty simple. You alone don’t move the mountain, it is a collective effort, “Thy Will Be Done”. At the same time, you have choices. You can choose in every moment what you wish to think and to a lesser extent, what you wish to feel. Let’s assume that you have free will. How will you use your free will? What choices and actions will you take?
Wayne Dyer has another book about finding out what you really, really, really, really want. I have not read it, but I know that exploring this question is a very powerful and rewarding experience. It has been really easy for me to forget what it is that I really want from this lifetime. It has been a decades-long path to finding out what my soul’s purpose is here in this lifetime. For the most part, I am a very happy man and have most of what I think I want. Here is a most recent example that I wanted to share because it has been so successful that it is just blowing my mind.
Since December of last year, because I will be turning 60 very soon, I have been saying, “My sixties are going to be great!”. This is my mantra. I got this idea from my mother, who told me that her 50’s was the best decade of her life. My 50’s sucked, so therefore, I needed something to look forward to. I have not been specific as to what that meant, just “My sixties are going to be great!”. But over the last 9 months, my unconscious mind has made it obvious that it knows what that means. First, I quit drinking alchohol with no cravings, which is something I have tried to do for the last 30 years without success. My chronic sinus infection of the last 20 years has mysteriously vanished. I have lost 15 pounds. My back problems are starting to dissolve. Why? Because I know that I can’t be “great” when my brain is fuzzy. I know that I can’t be “great” weighing what I have weighed for the last 30 years. I know that I can’t be “great” when my back hurts. All these changes happened without my having to use “will power” to manifest them.
So, here’s the take-away. You can read all those books that I mentioned and come up with a strategy, procedure, daily routing for managing your own free will. I like using wishes. For example, do you ever eat whole chickens? Save your wishbones. Make at least three wishes for different aspects of your life (career, partner, friends, spiritual, health, etc.). Think about them twice a day, morning and night. Assume they will evolve. Hone them, shape them, and run them through your mind throughout your day. So that you don’t forget to think about them, write them down, keep your wishbones in sight, do whatever it takes. After several months, you should start to have a different feeling about them and they should be changing less often.
Ultimately, you need something that speaks to your unconscious mind, because trying to control your will-power with your conscious mind is a setup for frustration. I call it a mantra. Keep it short and simple. When you say it, it should be easily believable. Say it with an intention to eventually fill every cell in your body with that belief. For me, seeing results take months, but the rewards are thrilling. I can’t wait for my 60’s to start.
1 comment:
Clyde, your comments reminds me of a "blog" I wrote a few years ago. I'll share it here as I think it compliments your message...
Perception – what is reality really?
I'm reading about the Buddhist theory of emptiness. At its heart is the deep recognition that there is a fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own existence in it, and the way things actually are. Now consider that the work in relativity and quantum mechanics suggest that we must abolish as a matter of principle the separability of subject and object, and with this all our certainties about the objectificability of our empirical data. The fact that light can be seen as either a particle or a wave is dependent upon the action of the observer and his choice of measurement. Given these two theories, how can we expect to meet someones expectations? The theory of emptiness implies that our perceptions of "reality" are flawed and the theories of modern physics also imply that reality is not as it appears to us.
A former boss of mine used to talk about managing perceptions. It seemed very control oriented to me at the time, somehow that it was being used to manipulate people. But considering the notion that reality isn't what it appears to be, managing perception is a useful tool to assist in helping someone to feel that their expectations have been met given otherwise ambiguous data. Since just considering one piece of data is not sufficient to draw one conclusion, we need a way to guide the conclusions in the desired direction. Perhaps an example might help make sense of my ramblings. Suppose I accidentally spilt a glass if wine. I might feel disappointed or upset; perhaps I might utter an expletive-deleted and think that, unlike milk, spilt wine is worth crying over. ;-) But I could interpret this event differently. I could think, "Oh! Perhaps I'm not supposed to have a glass of wine tonight." I know that this sounds far fetched but recently, I have been consciously working to "re-program" my brain and my thinking in the way that I react to events, and I actually had this very experience.
The point is that you can change the perception of an event based on the way it is viewed and presented. If an "error" is presented and reported as an "error message," it gets interpreted as a problem and then becomes a problem for the interpreter. This is perceived as a negative event and as a bad thing. If an "error" was to be presented as an "action alert" with a suggested remedy, the event gets interpreted as "a call to action" that helps the interpreter to remedy a problem. This is perceived as a positive event and as a good thing. As we build things, be it relationships with others or products, if is very important to carefully manage the perception of the events so that the data has a positive and not a negative effect on the interpreter.
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